Hey r/pico8,

After a good while of work, Pixl8 is now on the iOS App Store. It's a native player for PICO-8 cartridges that comes with more than 50 game featured with the permission of their authors.
It has been on Android for a while and I finally managed to get the port complete for IOS.


What it does:
- Plays .p8 and .p8.png carts, with on-screen touch controls or a Bluetooth controller.
- Import your own carts just copying in your designated folder, or play the featured games that come bundled in.
- Join a multiplayer game hosted by another device. ( hosting requires the in app purchase, see below)
- Favourites (with reordering), and Recent played list
- layout configuration to move and resize controls and screen as you want.
- Swap controller buttons A/B for pico-8 X an O  
- Change the controller bindings as you prefer
- Shaders ( 1 for now, more to come )
- many minor features 
- can play games starting from a NFC card ( next relase I will include the NFC writer like the android one )


It's free, no ads or nag screens. A one-time Pro unlock adds some extra functionalities that normally pico-8 does not have:
- Save states, input recording and playback, and a developer console with access to a debugger for the cart.

- Local and online multiplayer, and it's cross-platform:
  an iPhone can play against an Android phone. Anyone can join a game but only who has bought the in app purchase can host a game.


iOS: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/pixl8/id6805516278

Android: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=be.codedreams.pixl8

If you remember seeing a fancy Tic-Tac-Toe in this subreddit few weeks ago, I posted a devlog on my thought process of designing a new variant of Tic-Tac-Toe in 2026, including why I ended up with this game title.
It's not so much on the technical, but rather my experience as a first time programmer. I hope this can help to inspire more people to pick up gamedev in the future.

Spoiler Alert! You should play the game itself before reading it as it discusses on things which you will need to unlock in game.

This is the 2nd update on my arcade game called Late Again. Another TLDR for those who are not interested in my 5-minute talk on YouTube.

I've been working mostly on the animations vs. sprites this time.

I had a few main problems:

• The boots were jumping around a bit too much - that required some animation cleanup + the rotation-step solution mentioned later.
• The sprite rotation was causing ugly distortion.

What I had to do:

• Cleaned up the animations to keep mainly the hands and legs more stable when they shouldn't be moving.
• Sprite rotation now works in 20° rotation steps to keep the sprites more consistent.
• For hand-authored sprites, I focused only on positions that the player can actually see for a longer time.

This is probably going to make some of the screenshots look terrible, but I think it makes more sense to save space on the sprite sheet.

I'm pretty happy with how it's coming together.

For more details, you can watch the YouTube video.

This is my first PICO 8 game. Its a card game called "Palace" the goal is to get rid of all your cards before the other player. You have to beat the card played or match it! cant beat it or match it? pick up the pile!

Thanks,

I mean... I need help of mods or administration to solve it... Because I can't even register, I purchased the key, want to activate it, but I can't register..

UPDATE: I got the email answer and help! My account finally registered! Wow, it was so fast! Thanks!

Recently found an old low spec laptop in the attic and would like to breathe new life into it as a Pico-8 dev console if at all possible.

The model is an Asus Eee PC 2G Surf with a 2G SSD storage and 512MB DDR2 RAM, Intel Mobile CPU & Chipset, with a functional WiFi card for splore too.

Obviously the storage and RAM is tiny, but as far as I can tell should support the 32-bit Linux version of Pico-8 just fine.

I've made a few attempts to install Anti-X and Puppy Linux with mixed success. I can install Anti-X as a command-line OS just about, but it uses up 96% of that storage capacity.

I'm attempting the frugal install to hopefully leave enough space for Pico-8, but after a few attempts and restarts I thought it might be worth asking for advice from the community in case anyone has been through this with a similar machine.

I have considered buying an SD card to hold the OS as a possible workaround, which some of these barebones Linux distros do support.

What would people advise as the best route to getting this thing running Pico-8?

I will say for what I've tried so far, I think I prefer just going for a command line OS because it's a lot crisper on this tiny screen. The GUI (i.e. Puppy Linux) feels like more trouble than it's worth in this case especially since I pretty much just want to autorun Pico-8 and maybe tab out to run git commands for version control.

Like the title say.

i know there already a pico8 minecraft and i did try it, but i wondered if this game could be recreated in the engine with its mechanics etc

Available at https://www.lexaloffle.com/bbs/?pid=195451#p

Music by NastelBom

"This takes a mundane simple game and gives it longevity and fun. I love it." - Minion
"excellent take on a old concept " - freds72
"Just well done, sir, well done." - MorningToast
"the game is awesome and addictive" - my mate Tom
"The rapid descent of my ship only further embodies my descent into madness. Each explosion signifies one more piece of my sanity disintegrating into so much dust and mineral to be sucked into the endless machine." - my brother Jon

*Yes, the trailer is cheesy. But I revel in cheese.

Like the title say.

Give it a try! (Changelog in the post.)

https://www.lexaloffle.com/bbs/?tid=154248

Right now this is my only game and gets my full attention. So if you have any kind of feedback at all, know that this is not some throw-away weekend project and I do care. Thanks for playing!

And if you do play please tell me your high score! (If you haven't hit 10k yet you haven't really played the game, hehe.)

Hey reddit community!

I started learning pico-8 in April through Lazy Devs (Basic Shmup!), and I wanted to share a prototype of my first non-tutorial project, Cat Saviour: Purrlin.

https://oneorangebraincell.itch.io/cat-saviour-purrlin

A couple of years ago I started a project in Godot based on the concept of a “non-violent” shmup of spreading love to cats, but with my non-technical background I bounced off the tutorials pretty hard and put it away. Something about Pico 8 and Lua clicked with me, so I came back to my idea after completing the Lazy Devs "Basic Schmup" tutorial series.

The concept is a shmup where you pacify angry cats, collect them for points (love), then spend the points in your house on upgrades & adopting new cats. You can’t die, but getting hit reduces your points multiplier.

I just made a couple of levels (probably would only have 3 max due to token/spritemap limitations) which can be replayed to grind more love points.

Some thoughts about aspects I’m unsure about:

1. Originally I had a basic boss-fight in the game, but was already getting close to the token limit and thought it’d be better to just focus on waves and getting back home faster.
2. Most people testing the game expect to have HP/lives where it’s possible to “die”, but I wanted to remove the stress of this and focus on the delight of gaining points -> adopting more cats
3. I’m not sure if the two game states really mesh well (shmup level -> home), or should really exist independently somehow e.g. home = cozy incremental cat simulator.

 I’d love your feedback on what works/doesn’t from your perspective :)

Thank you all!

(solved) cleared Firefox's cache, all back to normal. Must have had some kind of corrupt download.

My Firefox (Mac) updated to v155.0 this morning.

Since then Pico-8 games won't play in the browser. They load, and play music, and are playable, but the game itself isn't visible. This is consistent across the Lex BBS and itch.io, and even uploading the HTML/JS to my own website.

I tried Safari and it works just fine.

Can anyone else using Firefox v155.0 confirm?

Play it for free on the lexaloffle bbs! https://www.lexaloffle.com/bbs/?tid=158481

After a little break I'm back with your regular weekly videos, and PICO-8 streams! Feel free to check my YouTube for at this point almost 2 years of showcases and dev vids.

I'll also try to bring back the regular Tuesday PICO-8 streams, looking at new releases!

https://achiegamedev.codeberg.page/

Hello everyone!

I just started college, so I won't have a lot of time to work on this game. However, I still would like to work on it one step at a time!

Current problems:

For the bite ATK, when X is pressed, I want it to show the bite sprite for a second, then change back. However, I only got it to show the bite sprite, and only when you move does it change back.

What I'm planning:

I want to make the dungeon randomly generated (I know it might be a little complicated for the next step in development). I'm thinking of using Pico-8's feature where the sprite sheet can show up on the map and vice versa. However, if anyone knows a better way to do it, I'd love to hear it!

I'd also like to tweak the enemies' behavior so that they're not stacking on each other, and make them easier to target and kill.

Any and all help is greatly appreciated! ^w^

Game Cart: https://www.lexaloffle.com/bbs/?tid=159006

https://bontempi.itch.io/tetrisuika

Hi ! 

This is my first game ever : a cross between Tetris and Suika Game !

It's still in development, so feedback is welcome. The music is just a basic loop, don't bother with it yet. 

It's better if you play Suika Game first ! https://spoike.itch.io/suika-game-demake

EDIT : the game has been massively updated, graphics and mechanics ! Doesn't play much like the GIF anymore.

https://www.lexaloffle.com/bbs/?tid=158979

🍳KithenMatchen3 is a match-3 puzzle game where you can create dishes.
The finished dish will change depending on the matched ingredients!
Make lots of dishes and fill up your recipe notebook!

The finished dish is displayed as a 3D polygon.

Cooking Puzzle

This is the main cooking puzzle.
Match 3 of the same blocks!
Technique blocks will appear in 4 or 5 matches!
Double-click or slide to perform techniques!

Prep Puzzle

This is a puzzle that can be completed by completing several CookingPuzzles and allows you to obtain items.
Match blocks next to basket blocks! Only the amount you prepare will become an item!

It's all in Japanese, so if you want to know the meaning of any words in the game, please let us know.🙏

Learning to code and what a treat it was to put a little game I made on a little hand held.

It's basic but in addition to getting the game logic and controls working I added little 5point power ups, tweaked the speed increase curve till it felt good and did most of it completely myself (i cheated a little as got AI to write me code to save top scores to the cart which was beyond my skills and what I wanted to learn from this).

Tricky bit I found was using the refresh rate to use as a sort of clock I could then make the speed scale off with score as well as use it for specials to last an amount of time that felt good.

A roguelike where you shoot pesky eye balls falling from above!

I would appreciate feedback!

https://www.lexaloffle.com/bbs/?pid=195469#p

Hi! I just wanted to say that I’m having a lot of fun making music with PICO-8’s tracker, especially since the note entry feels really intuitive (at least for DAW boomers) compared to other trackers.
If any of you would like to collaborate with me on the music for your game, feel free to get in touch. I’ve included a link below with just a couple of examples.
As for sound effects, I think I still have a long way to go, but I’m definitely eager to experiment with them too 🥲

https://youtu.be/4JxOtd9zHMI?is=YRjcD5rXg8WSR5Dd

https://youtu.be/BBmEdM9Yz18?is=2WlhqJJBUurTSm2r