I can't believe I just learned about PICO-8 last week! The Lua language is such a great fit for this project. This was my first project dabbling into the PICO-8 project. Back in school many moons ago we played around with trigonometry and that topic just fascinated me and we created many visual effects. This one was a few lines demo back then so I decided to port it over to PICO-8 and pushed it a bit further with a configuration dashboard that gives you the ability to adjust any parameter to make it your own. I was also interested in how the save state works, so everything that you change is saved when you exit the app, for the next time you launch it. I was interested in screen swipe effects which were successfully leveraged here and the use of the mouse option as well. I paid most attention to the config dashboard to make it as user friendly and intuitive as possible.
5 comments
Hi everyone this is Spong my first game with PICO-8.
Spong is a very simple version of solo pong
Controls
While playing
⬅️➡️ to move the player
Main menu
❎ to start playing
⬆️⬇️ to select a skin for the ball
⬅️➡️ to select a skin for the player
Game over screen
❎ to restart
Features (just one)
- 4 Ball and player skins
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Hey guys,
I've had a vague game concept in my head for long time, and just had a burst of motivation to start writing up some plans for a Pico 8 game/prototype.
The game idea is essentially turning the fun of a Dungeon Master creating a TTRPG campaign into a single player experience. What this means is the player would make choices at the start of the game like what setting to play in, what kind of classes, species, mechanics, etc, exist in the world, time period, genre, and so on, then a campaign is generated from those points which the player plays through and completes.
Obviously that's massive in scale. It's big and complex enough when you're just using your imagination and a pencil. So I'm cutting it down a lot so that there's only one setting to suit the small tileset, minimal text/story focus, stuff like that.
One cut I made was simplifying classes/mechanics/genre down to just three game types: combat, trading and exploration. You'd be able to choose one of those at the start and the levels would require you to complete tasks based on those themes. You would be able to unlock the other game types by completing the one you picked, and then you'd be able to combine them, e.g. a game where you need to explore for things to sell.
3 comments
Pachink_Go
A game by Mc_Shredz
A game made for short burst sessions. I wanted the mechanics to be snappy, and the levels are procedural. There isn't really an end goal yet, it is just meant to be fun
I intend to add more modes where there is actually a goal in mind
code is by me, but I have used Claude for the music. No intention to break the user agreement, so if this is a problem, I will re-upload without sound, or will add my own music when I get some practice.
Controls
Direction Pad left and right aims the launcher
Press X to launch the ball
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I finished my first game, so sharing it feels pretty exciting—and a little nerve-racking! I’d love to hear what you think. Any feedback, thoughts, or suggestions are very welcome. I hope you enjoy exploring Hexwood!
Hexwood
Lost in Hexwood. Hunted by its shadows. Can you escape—and free your soul?
How to play
Explore its rooms, gather the items you need, and find a way through the obstacles in your path.
Controls
12 comments
I made a combo cart to feature all of the PICO-8 submissions from this year. It was a blast participating in the jam, and I can't wait for next year!
The jam theme was "ま", which could be interpreted as "間" (space between), "馬" (horse), or... any number of other things, really.
Featuring...
- ma no bouken by @shoma and CornetTheory
- dit dit dah by @Kenta Saito and CornetTheory
- Manhole Brushers by @uchuzine @aulejey and @mabbees
4 comments
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Hello pico-8 people, this is not really a game, its more something that was born out of my laziness to actually finish a project i just started. Im posting this here in hopes the shame of it not being in a presentable state will bring me to work on it. That being said, theres no game, its just like, an introduction, a walking system, and the start of a combat system.
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I live in Aotearoa, of pākehā heritage. It would be cultural overreach to make any sort of statement about bullfighting, but, personally, I don't really like it. I tried to think of a different setting where the joke still works though and couldn't, so here it is.
Known issues:
- the doors stick out into the arena. There's a fix for this but I'm not going to implement it, I'm done with this project for the moment.
Credits:
My brother for doing game jams with me.
MBoffin for their tutorial on game states: https://mboffin.itch.io/pico8-game-states
this tutorial on (among other things) animations: https://www.lexaloffle.com/bbs/?tid=44686
glies.itch.io/hubris
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On android im using this frontend
https://github.com/Macs75/pico8-android
With pico from humble raspberry pi version (im using it on normal samsung phone not any handheld)
On windows well i have windows version from humble
And difference is i have same exact carts folder (copied from pc to android)
And on windows i don't see sub folders in splore and on android i do
I see them with ls command
I can access them with cd folder name
But even if i get into any folder as soon as i leave it with ..
Its like it never was there and does not show up on list
I have folder named new
And if i do cd new
On top of file list i see folder icon with /new/
So only issue is visibility of folders on list
And i can't find anyone even talking about similliar issue
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Can one even make mistakes if one can control time itself?
- press ⬅️⬇️⬆️➡️ to move
- press ❎/x to jump
- press 🅾️/c to use weapon (each weapon has 3 uses)
TIP: After the tutorial, you can turn on the checkpoints in the menu (press Enter > Checkpoints on/off).
Steal the time from a rotting corpse of its former master, dodge his bullet-hell-like spells, and fight his army of minions. But what will you do when you win? How will you use it?
For downloads, you can visit itch.io.
Features
- 3 stages
- 3 weapons
12 comments
K-Booom
How many asteroids will you destroy before your ineluctable end?
Controls
K-Booom is a very tiny shooter. Pilot your ship into the heart of an endless wave of ever-multiplying asteroids.. Shoot them to score.
- Arrow keys - Move your ship
- (X) Button - Shoot
- (O) Button - Start game
There's also an extra menu to reset the hi-score in the pause menu.
Some screenshots
My personal best: 234
Rentless asteroids
Tips
About
5 comments
In a lighthouse in the southern sea, your research nears it's end. Twenty years have passed since the first appearance of the Azure beacon. What caused a light to emerge from the sea and pierce the skies?
Important!!!
Since this is the "jam release" of the game, it is in a quite unpolished state, but it won't stay like this. Well, the jam version probably will, but the full release won't.
If you have any bugs to report, or possible QOL advice, feel free to comment, since I'll take into account all comments for said full release.
Development
This game was created for the
3 comments
My latest game, Beneath the Depths, is a bit technically complicated. It uses some rather unusual methods for extending the spritsheet space in a normal pico-8 cart without using reload(), and it takes advantage of the nature of memory in pico-8 to acomplish it. So, here is a deep dive into all the things I found out about while making this game:
Introduction to key concepts
First of all, if you are not familiar with the way memory works in pico-8, or you need a refresher, i recomend chacking out LazyDevs'( @Krystman) video on memory or reading the pico-8 wiki for information on the memory layout.
Aditionally, most of the things I'll talk about here I created with information from this post: Upper memory: 4 more spritesheets!. It uses a different method to reach a similar goal to me, but it is a bit more math-heavy, but do check it out!
Now, lets dive into it.
Extended spritesheet space with memcpy() and load()
Since Pico-8 0.2.4, memory now includes a section going from 0x8000 to 0xffff for general use. However, it can't be directly modified with reload(), which can only target regions from 0x0 to 0x4300. So, how can we use all that real state for our extended spritesheet?
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This cart performs sprite rotation using an old technique called "three shears rotation":
- Do an X shear on
tan(angle / 2). - Do a Y shear on
-sin(angle). - Do the first shear again.
One interesting property is that no pixels are created or destroyed, only displaced. This got me curious how it would look, so I went ahead and did a small implementation in Pico-8. Ended up being a bit disappointed in the quality, but maybe someone will find it useful.
It has some precision issues due to how it works (it offsets scanlines onto another buffer, then samples from that buffer for the next step). I tried to counter that by introducing a rounding offset to the first and third shears, with limited success. I might tweak this some more to see if I can preserve some of the subpixel precision. For now, you can swap the X and Y shears and see if you get better results with one over the other.
1 comment