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.
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.
The classic 16-bit-era action puzzle game returns again - enhanced and remastered. Pico de Pon brings favorite characters from across the PICO-8 library together for intense block-swapping battle.
Explore an archipelago, encounter fellow explorers, and seduce and haggle with them to help you complete your map!
This is 2018’s assignment, a diabolical puzzle. You’re a monk who has forgotten where his cell is in the monastery, and who must walk the labyrinth in order to remember it. If you can find his room, you’ll find out what the assignment prompt is. I was a bit worried the students would be unable to find the prompt hidden in this one, but about half of them got there eventually. (The rest were expelled from the university.) 2018’s class was 100% Pico-8 so it seemed appropriate that the prompt game should be in Pico-8 too. Pico-8 is so great for prototyping — as a case in point, it builds to a single JS and HTML file which loads quite happily in the browser from a local file, so you don’t get annoying permissions or crossdomain problems.
A port of Another World game engine & assets to PICO-8.
Help Mr. Swop find stars by swapping tiles around.
Brendan Keogh's Putting Challenge is a Pico-8 golf game about the parts of golf that other videogames cut out. Put the ball on the tee yourself. After hitting the ball, manually walk to where the ball went before you hit it again. If the ball goes in the water, put down another ball! Remove your ball from the hole before moving on to the next hole. If you run out of balls, return to the Pro Shop to get more balls. This is a golf game with unprecedented interactivity!!
A retro futuristic anti-gravity racing game!
A simple endless game that made during SGDQ 2020.
Basil's off on her adventures again, scattering dandelions and finding butterfly friends.
Move the dice to destroy all other dice in every level if your value is higher.
Pico-8 version of the 1981 Konami arcade game. Most "enemies" (the Amidar) follow a set movement pattern. The blue enemies are tracers and circuit the outside. On later levels, after a set number of circuits, they start to chase you!
Sokoblox is a hybrid of two classic puzzle games: Sokoban (the push puzzle) and Bloxorz (the rolling block puzzle).
Select numbers that add to ten, to remove them from the board. How high can you score in just 2 minutes?
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.
A retro-styled railway management strategy game!
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 action puzzle game with the concept of "recording and replaying movements."
Put a golf ball in your vagina and kegel it out! Neo Pussy Masters is a golfing game about transfemininity. Only on the PICO-8!
Reach the finish if you can, there's a lot of gold before it!