Popular games built on game engine PICO-8
A hardcore platform game for the PICO-8 fantasy console.
Tutankham is a combination of the maze, action and shoot 'em up genres. Taking on the role of an explorer grave robbing Tutankhamun's tomb, the player is chased by creatures such as asps, vultures, parrots, bats, dragons, and even curses, all that kill the player on contact. The explorer can fight back by firing lasers at the creatures, but he can only cover the left and right directions. The player is also endowed with a single screen-clearing "flash bomb" per level or life. Finally, each level has warp zones that teleport the player around the level, which enemies cannot use. To progress, the player collects keys open locked doors throughout the levels, searching for the large exit door. Optional treasures can be picked-up for bonus points. Each level has a timer; when it reaches zero the explorer can no longer fire lasers, and once a level is cleared the remaining time is converted to bonus points.
A one level PICO-8 demake of Rez for the Dreamcast by Morgan Quirk.
Boomby explodes (aka: jumps) every 2 seconds. Keep track of the timebar at the bottom of the screen, time your moves right. There are multiple routes to the pool, keep exploring if you get stuck or frustrated at a section of the map. Trampolines are a tricky, patience pays off. Try not to rush out of the first explosion after touching one. After the first explosion, the bounce rhythm balances out. There are 3 bomb "keys" (red, green, blue). These allow you to destroy colored bricks. Yellow Coins: $1, Platinum Coins: $5, Green Coins: $20 The only purpose of crouching is to move the camera down (and to look cute, actually).
A Top-down dungeon crawler bullet-hell shmup.
A PICO-8 demake of the classic Konami arcade game Time Pilot (1982).
A SHMUP-Survivor-Roguelike mash where you must dodge, shoot, and upgrade in order to beat the final boss. Created along the LazyDevs academy basic shmup tutorial with its own twists on the theme.
A little puzzle game with a little puzzle twist.
In 2021, the last time I taught the class, I didn’t want to hide the homework in the games. Instead I used the games as ways of presenting ideas. I made several, but I like this one, a reinterpretation of the fortune-telling minigame from Ultima IV.
An explosive homage to the old-time multiplayer classic made with PICO-8! In this game, your goal is to drop bombs on the battlefield to eliminate all other players in time and be the last manbomber standing. The game can be played with up to 4 players battling each other. While in the 2-player mode, both players can use the same keyboard to control their manbomber, a controller for each player is required for all other modes. Any Controller which can be connected to your device will do!
A PICO-8 demake of of the PSP game Every Extend Extra, an arcade game about detonating your ship, causing colourful chain reactions in the enemies, granting you points.
Totally original RTS about bossing around plant people
A demake of Terraria, in PICO-8!
You must find 3 magic relics to help rid the land of evil. Use the Find-O-Meter and your trusty shovel to search the forest. But if you dig up the dead you'll need to fight them off to stay alive, so pay attention to everything you unearth...it might just save your life.
Crashed on a desolate but mysterious planet you find yourself eye to eye with an ancient civilisation. Explore the planet, find powerful upgrades, and uncover its secrets.
A turn-based asteroids / snake / roguelike for LD41. VYPERSPACE is an asteroids game, you shoot asteroids to break them into smaller chunks before you can destroy them. Sometimes there is ore inside. VYPERSPACE is a snake game, you eat ore to grow longer and need to avoid running into your own tail. VYPERSPACE is a roguelike, it is a keyboard-driven turn-based tile-grid game of delaying permadeath by emergent hazards that only move when you do.
A 5-10 minute long visual novel made in PICO-8 about growing up and moving on.
Cipher-8 is a brain-twisting minimalist arcade puzzler where you push numbers into a grid and manipulate them with randomly drawn special abilities. Blitz mode is all about frantic combo streaks. In puzzle mode you can analyze every move. Both modes scale infinitely in their difficulty.
A noisy, pixellated vampire platformer set in the Nevada desert. When Ysabel, a vampire living in Reno, finds her brother dead with a strange crucifix-like structure attached to him, she finds herself compelled to take revenge on the humans that murdered him.
A clone of PakuPaku — built using PICO-8, with no external sprites or assets. It’s basically a one-button game: Press any arrow key to flip your direction. Eat pellets. Dodge the ghost — unless you're powered up. Fast, focused, and minimal. Just pixels, logic, and a bit of chaos. Made as a small learning project.
An 8-bit homage to the original Superhot game created by three members of the Superhot Team.
Inspired by the release of CorgiSpace and SEBI16, the author wanted to try out PICO-8. Here is the result! His first PICO-8 game, made between January 18th-22nd of 2026.
Try to get the frogs to the top of the screen to fed, by playing cards
A faithful tribute that captures every little detail of the original game developed by Nintendo in 1984. Test your reflexes in this PICO-8 demake of the NES classic!