I've been making games for a while, mostly in Unity. But I've always loved pixel art and retro stuff, so I finally decided to try PICO-8. Here's what I came up with.

It's a bubble shooter. You shoot colored balls, match three or more balls of the same color to pop them, and try to keep the stack from reaching the bottom. There are three modes: Endless, Normal, and Hardcore. Chain combos, use special balls, and go for a high score.

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Pixel Edit Lite

A small, offline iPhone sprite editor for PICO-8.

I originally built it because I wanted to mess around with sprites when I wasn't at my Mac.

PICO-8 → iPhone → PICO-8

This is the workflow I use most:

Copy a sprite from PICO-8 → edit it on my iPhone → copy it back.

Pixel Edit Lite supports the actual PICO-8 sprite clipboard format, so there's no conversion step.

Features

• 128×128 PICO-8 sprite sheet
• PICO-8 sprite clipboard support
• Pencil, eraser and bucket fill
• Lines, rectangles and circles
• Rotate, flip and shift sprites
• PICO-8 and TIC-80 palettes
• Import sprite sheets from Files
• Recent Projects
• Undo / redo
• Offline — no account required
• Share sprites with the native iOS share sheet

Another workflow

I also use it to import an existing sprite sheet from Files, select a sprite, make a quick change, and then take it back into PICO-8.

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pico-8 gfx sprites sprite-editor mobile iphone tool

Power Pong

This is my first PICO-8 game. The goal was to create the best version of pong that I could.

Features

Game Modes

Multi-player:

• Power Pong
• Classic Pong
• Dodgeball

Single-player:

• Endless
• Break The Targets

Maps

Each map has a unique gimmick and music track.

• Pong
• Desert
• Portal Lab
• Space
• Ocean

Powers

In Power Pong, each player selects one offensive and one defensive power.

Offense:

• Strength
• Shrink
• Invisiball
• Control
• Stick

Defense:

• Ball Slow
• Grow
• Trace
• Double Paddle
• Wall

About the development

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My first pico game! Intended as an ARS style tetris practice game to run on systems like MISTeR FPGA and android. Been having a blast working on this. and I hope to add more features to help grandmasters in the making!

Codes:
Invisible tetris: Hold X+O and hit left, down, right, right, down, left
20G mode: Hold X+O and hit down 8 times

You can view your section times and blocked line counts by pressing O after topping out

Graphics done by Stinger o Wanjiro
Music by Neoncryptid

tetris tgm clone

Hola amigos.

Ya que pico 8 0.2.7 tiene un bug que no le permite leer carpetas con juegos dentro de la carpeta cart.... decidí hacer un menú simple que permita hacerlo. Ideal para quien tenga alguna colección guardada en el disco duro con muchos juegos ordenados en carpetas, sobre todo si quieren hacer una consola pico-8 sin conexion a internet, como la que yo me queria hacer.

Lee automáticamente carpetas-carts y los agrega a la lista... ojo el cart debe estar guardado en el disco duro o almacenamiento y debe ser ejecutado desde ahi.

Temática Jeep Willys
Enciende el motor presionando izq + Z

Para hacer una selección puedes usar los favoritos de splore o los favoritos de engine

Saludos

Ojo: no sirve para HTML, solo usar con pico-8 Windows, Raspberry, Linux, etc,... sistema que tenga hardware con almacenamiento persistente.

No funciona online (por algo se llama offline), no ve el contenido del disco al ejecutarlo vía bbs desde splore, debes descargarlo en tu carpeta carts, ejecutar la versión grabada en tu disco duro desde línea de comandos o desde splore.

splore offline hdd

Finally, a realistic fishin' game! It's just you and a boat, and a bunch of fish under the water that don't seem terribly interested in your worm. Maybe you can get a nibble. But can you reel one in? Find out, in Realistic Fishin'!

Controls: a gamepad, or the Z, X, and Arrow keys

What Players Are Saying

"I can't catch a fish"
~ Kevin

"It was relaxing enough I suppose"
~ Tom

So realistic, it's just like real fishing!

Made by Owen Goss

FAQ

Q: Is it possible to actually catch a fish?
A: What? No. This is realistic fishin'.

fishing

A short game about keeping people happy.

You are a policy consultant. A political party has hired you to create a new policy initiative. Different choices affect different groups in different ways. Can you keep the groups interested in this policy happy?

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Owen's Note: This is obviously a gross simplification of how government policy is made. Usually the number of variables is unknown, and the effects the policy will have on different groups may not be fully understood. A good government tries its best to make sure policy works to accomplish a goal, with the ultimate goal of improving things for the most people possible. I made this small game after thinking about how much more difficult governing is for governments who are working to try to help everyone, as opposed to governments who only care about helping a small portion of the population.

short game

A recreation of Auto Test (1954) as an educational driving simulator where the player watches a real-life driving scenario and tries to match the driver’s actions: steering, accelerating, and braking.

simulator

Dodge the Lightning

I wanted an excuse to implement the A* algorithm and I thought it would be fun to use it for a visual element rather than AI pathfinding.

The lightning's path is dependent on the features on the screen, so if you stand near the tree (but not too near) you should be safe from the lightning, and if you stand out in the open, you yourself become a lightning rod.

The timing of the lightning is entirely dependent on how many frames it takes to pathfind.

Hello! This is a falling-block puzzle game I've been working on for a bit. I hope you enjoy. If anyone has feedback I'd love to hear it.

My highscore is 23,130 at level 8.

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Instructions

	[48x8]

Place down bombs and fuses then light them up with fire to blow up all the scrap. Fires only comes every now and then, so you'll need to connect multiple bombs with one big fuse and blow them up all at once.

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puzzle falling-block arcade

My game Missile in a mineshaft works great on phone, browser, Miyoo mini. But the ore collection* doesn't seem to work on a player's "anbernic rgcubexx with muos". Is there a resource that I can check to understand these sort of bugs better?

*The code checks for an explosion using pget and reads the colours then places a black patch over the top. I wonder whether it's a timing issue where the black patch lands before the colour is checked but there's no way for me to test other than sending files to the player for them to check.

bug

Code Golf Snake

I wanted to make the game snake in as few tokens as possible, and got it down to 192!

Some strategies I used:

• No cls(), instead the tiles around the snake are cleared.
• Condensed equations (x=2,y=3 became x,y=2,3)
• Some jank (spr(,x,y) == spr(0,x,y))

If you can optimize it more please let me know, this really was as condensed as I could get it. Some areas I feel probably could be done in less tokens are the controls code and some of the nested if statements.

Lmk what you think!

codegolf snake tokens minimal

PICO-1K Jam 2026

Grappeloid

Asteroids, but with a grappling hook. A physics simulator that lets you use your ship's mass and velocity to fling asteroids into other asteroids. Smash them into smaller bits to collect resources to upgrade your ship.

WIP

I'm new to pico-8, and this is my first game. I could really use some playtesting and feedback. I've been working hard to make it feel fun to use the grappling hook to traverse and manipulate the asteroid field, but it takes some practice. I'd recommend keyboard and mouse which allows for strafing, but it isn't completely necessary.

Controls

Pico-8 controls:

• Arrows to aim your ship (stick is easier than a d-pad)
• ❎ to fire thrusters

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action physics

Flappy Bird (PICO-8)

A tiny retro remake of the classic one-button flyer, built entirely from 8x8 tiles. This is my first game, so go easy on me! Tap the X or O button to make the bird flap — let go and gravity takes over fast, so timing is everything. Weave through the gaps in the pipes without clipping the top, bottom, or floor to rack up your score. Miss one, and it's game over — press the button again to jump right back in.

How to play:

X or O button — flap / start / retry
Each pipe you clear adds 1 to your score
Touching a pipe, the ceiling, or the floor ends the run

pico-8 flappy bird flappybird arcade casual one-button retro pixel-art f

Added back the tilemap and improved the fog/darkness made the player crouch and finally cleaned up some code, things have been going great and I cant wait to actually start making a game, I've always loved the little hidden areas in nsmbw or in animal well.
(Should I just keep updating this post? I feel like this isnt a gif anymore but a devlog page)
(9/7/2026)

Testing physics for a game, will soon provide the code as a playable cart, since I have some questions about the quality of the code. have a lucky day!

devlogs

A recreation of Bouncing Ball (1953) — one of the earliest known real-time graphical computer games.

simulator