So, a couple of days ago I was lurking around on a game dev discord.  Possibly the Mini-Jam discord. When I noticed someone showcasing a neat retro soundtrack they made.  I was naturally curious and started both asking them about it and praising their work.  At first, I assumed they were using a custom-made tool.  Turns out they were using something called PICO-8 to make their music.  PICO-8?  I had never heard of this tool before.  After asking around a bit I got a free link to the education edition of the tool and started messing around with it.  I was hooked.

What is Pico-8?  Pico-8 is a fantasy console, or an emulator for a video game console that never existed.  Within this application, you can build and play tiny retro games made by other people.  You can make tiny games that are playable on a browser or any other Pico-8 consol.  The Pico-8 is incredibly limiting.  Limited to very simple code, a simple pixel art, only 16 colors to work with, simple retro music, and sfx, its interesting to use.  Were as most modern game engines let you do so many different things that you can get bogged down in all the details.  But Pico-8 is so simple that it lets you build something small with in an hour.  In-fact due to its limitations it forces you to get creative with your solutions and really boil down your game to its core.

After getting access to the Pico-8 toolkit and poking around for a bit I decided to follow a tutorial series on reddit.  I eventually landed on Dylan Bennett’s ten-part Top-down Adventure Game Tutorial series.  You can find a like to it down below.  In it Dylan goes over the basics of coding in Pico-8.  Following the tutorial got me a basic map, player movement, keys and doors, an inventory of keys, traps, and a win and lose screen.  I also followed an additional tutorial from him to get a working text system. 

Building on top of the code and art assets I got from the tutorial I made the rest of this game.  I started by landing on an art style.  Even though Pico-8 provides a color pallet of 16 colors I stuck with using only 3 colors: Red, Black, and White.  Well, the black instead was the dark purple/blue.  This is because Pico-8 defaults Black to its transparent color.  I found out later that you can change this, but I didn’t know this until way late into development.  Using these three colors I started making the tile set for the world and player character.  I eventually settled on dividing the world into 3 unique zones.  The Islands, the City, and the caves.  Once I did that scattered the collectables, and characters around the world so the player could interact with them and get some text.  After that I made a central core area that only opens if the player collects all 24 collectables or shards as I called them.  Once the player enters that area, they win the game.  Once the art and world were in place, I started adding a few sound effects and music.  To get the music started I followed an excellent tutorial by Gruber (link below) on how to make a base line using one note.  I lastly added the code that could change the music depending on where on the map the player is.  With all of this done I added a win screen, opening title screen, and opening logo.  Lastly, I just needed to export and upload the game.  After about a weeks’ worth of work Cube was done.

There’s a lot that I learned from this small project.  From the basics of how to use the Pico-8 toolset to general music and level design.  I learned the basic coding game loop in Pico-8.  Some of the basic coding principles and how to look up more details on the API (a lot of its on its own wiki).  Some basic design principle in how to make an interesting world and keep things different with a limited color palette.  And lastly, I learned some basic music theory.  But most of all I learned to not care how limited the game is or if it’s good or bad, but to just try and create something.

Going forward I think I’m going to try to make a few more games in Pico-8.  Perhaps a more advanced adventure game or a game from a different genre.  Probably the latter.  

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Sources:

Pico-8 Webpage: https://www.lexaloffle.com/pico-8.php

Pico-8 on itch.io: https://lexaloffle.itch.io/pico-8

Pico-8 Top-down Adventure Game Tutorial by Dylan Bennett: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J1wvvbVQ5zo

Pico-8 Getting Started with Sound & Music by Gruber: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nwFcitLtCsA

Pico-8 Creating a Bass Line with One Note by Gruber: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OsLWpVDGPzg