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.
Get pigment droplets, dodge the deadly razor discs, paint all tiles
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.
Blast off and strike the evil green legion of mutating ships from outer-space!
Jump and fight your way up through this vertical platformer through various short levels, and challenge yourself to keep up the combo's.
Uchu Mega Fight has three styles for each character. Choose a system that is close to your taste and the game you are familiar with .
A retro-styled railway management strategy game!
a 8bit Space shooter in Pico 8
Lock and Release! A PICO-8 caravan shmup. Reach the core. Defend the Earth!
This is a small game, that asks the important question... Are you a pro enough gamer to defeat the God of rock paper scissors?
A Nuclear Throne demake for the PICO-8. You play as Suzie and Bob who are trapped in a merciless world and have to fight your way out!
Climb the tower of archeos and kill the evil sorcerer. An enhanced version was later released for itch.io and Steam.
Gather resources and build a cosy little town!
A one level PICO-8 demake of Rez for the Dreamcast by Morgan Quirk.
Cute retro racer. Go loop and loop in this relaxing animal racing game!
A Top-down dungeon crawler bullet-hell shmup.
A PICO-8 demake of the classic Konami arcade game Time Pilot (1982).
What's at the bottom of the pit? Could be anything! Could be everything! I have to find out!
For 2019 I ran two prototyping classes – one in Pico-8 for the undergraduates and a graduate version with no platform constraint (which generally means they work in Unity). So this year I hid the same prompt in two different interpretations of the same idea. I tuned the Pico-8 game for the youthful reflexes of the undergraduate class, but I did not count on the fact that none of them would have ever played a bullet-hell game, and as a result, only one of them was able to reach the end and find out what the assignment was. I instructed that person that they could keep it a secret if they wanted to.
Picross game with 12 easy (10x10) puzzles and 15 normal (15x15) puzzles.
"From Rust To Ash" is roguelike auto battler where your items are your build. Fight, Loot, Scavenge. Arrange your items to benefit from each other, store items in your backpack for future synergies, scrap what you don't need to increase your health. Do all that you need to survive the encounters before you.
For my very final prompt, I wanted to leave the students with one lasting idea: that I make games for enjoyment and want to do it as much as I can, even when I’m limited to a day or two’s work and 8192 Pico8 tokens. I hope that came across in this little game.
Picopicotron is a toy desktop environment built with PICO-8. Use the mouse to control it like a standard computer from the nineties. Includes a Pyramid card game and a version of minesweeper.