Every time I look at this I'm absolutely baffled by the quality of little games, although many being clones.<p>I just wasted 30' in 1 click. Something I can't say about my steam library. I think it has to do with the instant-ON aspect of the games. <click> -> start, immersed. As opposed to many screens, "oh that needs an update"...
PICO-8 is fantastic! If you know the platformer Celeste, it started off originally as a PICO-8 game for a game jam. It really feels to me as an exemplar of 'constraints beget creativity'.
Anyone interested in trying it out should check out Tweetcarts[1], they're little PICO-8 programs that fit inside single Tweets:<p>1. <a href="https://twitter.com/search?q=%23tweetcart&src=typed_query" rel="nofollow">https://twitter.com/search?q=%23tweetcart&src=typed_query</a>
My favorite PICO-8 game is a DOOM clone:<p><a href="https://freds72.itch.io/poom" rel="nofollow">https://freds72.itch.io/poom</a>
There are a few similar open source projects, like Tic-80 and Liko-12. Both can be programmed with Lua, but Tic-80 can also be programmed with others like Javascript and Wren and the porting process can be fairly simple.
The creator of Pico8 is already working on a successor called Picotron: <a href="https://www.lexaloffle.com/picotron.php" rel="nofollow">https://www.lexaloffle.com/picotron.php</a><p>Personally quite looking forward to what people make with it, the pico8 community really went to town with games and concepts
Is there a tool/platform/etc like pico that would allow you to make SNES era quality/style games?<p>I love love pico! But also SNES is my childhood console. I would love something as simple/fun as Pico.
Playing with constraints is always fun, and Pico8 makes it even funnier!<p>Here are my experiments and games from a couple of years ago: <a href="https://diegofg.com/projects/pico8/" rel="nofollow">https://diegofg.com/projects/pico8/</a>
I started making games regularly with the PICO-8, and it's a fantastic tool and community.<p>Eventually I wanted to make larger projects, so I was inspired to make my own engine, for when you want to transcend its limitations.<p>Because of its minimal nature, you can kind of scope up gradually, to whatever kind of project and scale you like.<p><a href="https://domeengine.com" rel="nofollow">https://domeengine.com</a>
Does anyone know of a PICO-8 implementation where I don’t need to use their text editor for code (but can still use their sprites and audio editors)?<p>Perhaps the answer is “all of them” and I just don’t fully understand the abstraction.
On a side-note: How Voxatron does it's rendering purely software-based was something that impressed me the most. Tried to replicate that for a pet project, but failed along the way.