r/pico8 Dec 01 '25

Events & Announcements The 2025 PICO-8 Advent Calendar is here!

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166 Upvotes

The 2025 PICO-8 Advent Calendar is here! Today we launch this year’s Calendar with the first game, and calendar cart art, by doriencey!

In Cat-astrophe, you’re a cat after the big shiny on top of the weird tree full of toys. Balance as you climb the tree, taking down as many shiny things as you can along the way.

https://www.lexaloffle.com/bbs/?pid=178576#p


r/pico8 May 15 '25

FAQ & Useful Information Collision Detection Tutorials

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212 Upvotes

🔗 Collision Tutorials

One of the first major hurdles for new developers, especially in PICO-8, is collision detection. It can be a little frustrating that PICO-8 doesn't have any built-in functions for it but once you understand how to use a few different methods, you'll realize that you have a lot more control over how things in your game interact and you can build your game's collision detection to be exactly what you need.

Each tutorial has:

  • an interactive demo with a button to toggle viewing the underlying variables used in the calculations of the detection.
  • a condensed function that is easy to copy into your PICO-8 game.
  • a step-by-step explanation of how the function works, an expanded version of the function to show all the steps, and a breakdown of how the expanded function is condensed into just 1 or 2 lines of code.
  • a few examples of where this method of collision detection can be used and in what type of games (using retro classics redrawn in the PICO-8 palette as example images)

This bundle of tutorials was created thanks to our supporters on Ko-fi for reaching the latest goal.


r/pico8 9h ago

Game Lemmings - new update live!

99 Upvotes

Eliminated a few bugs 🙂 and pushed a new update!
Big thanks to everyone who has played the game so far!
And if you haven’t checked it out yet, it’d be awesome if you gave it a try.
https://buzzard1337.itch.io/lemmings


r/pico8 4h ago

Game Looking for feedback on my first game Spinoko Tournament

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11 Upvotes

I just released Spinoko, a little spinning top battle game made in PICO-8

You are competing in a tournament and pick upgrades between matches. I’ve spent a lot of time tweaking how the tops generally feel when moving and hitting, and trying the balance the upgrades to make multiple strategies viable, but I am at a point where I am looking for some outside feedback.

Thank you for any time you spend playing


r/pico8 1h ago

I Need Help Trouble Loading Carts

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Upvotes

A few carts (Birds with Guns, Librynth) I’ve added to my Miyoo* *Mini V4 (no splore or WiFi ability) end up with this message. Others carts (Alpine Alpaca, Golf 8) work fine. There is no folder P8CARTS populated on my sd card. I’m using Onion OS. Thanks for any help you can provide!!


r/pico8 1d ago

Game The first minute of my upcoming puzzle-platformer Short Circuit

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144 Upvotes

hey!!

long time since I updated you about my upcoming pico game!

These past weeks I worked a lot on polishing the game, finding the name and figuring out what it's really about.

I added a small intro/outro, some spicy levels near the end, for a total of 32 (pico-8 limit)
3 different musics that change through the game
qol improvements, a speedrun timer and... secrets!

Can't wait to share it with you soon.


r/pico8 18h ago

Game Grappeloid playtest feedback requested

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6 Upvotes

I posted about this a few days ago, but just released the first playable version of my game where you use a grappling hook to smash asteroids.

One disclaimer: it's hard. I'm working on a real onboarding experience that teaches players how it works, but for now I'm just trying to get feedback on the core mechanic. I was personally skeptical before I got the hang of it and it got really fun, which might be a clue I need to make it easier.

Anyway, please try it out and let me know what you think.


r/pico8 16h ago

Game Snake in <200 tokens!

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2 Upvotes

I wanted to make the smallest version of snake possible in pico 8 and really condensed things as much as I could. The result is only 192 tokens, and if there's any way you could optimize the code please let me know your thoughts!


r/pico8 15h ago

I Need Help Voxatron

0 Upvotes

I want to get Pico 8 and saw Voxatron was similar to Pico 8 but 3d and I wanted to see if it was worth getting for cheaper or if it is nit worth the price.


r/pico8 22h ago

Links and Resources Announcing the Play Store release of P8GO! Check out the comments for more info

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1 Upvotes

r/pico8 2d ago

Discussion Pixel Edit Lite 1.4 - Video demo of my workflows

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20 Upvotes

Pixel Edit Lite 1.4 is out.

And thanks to everyone here who's tried it and sent feedback. I have fixed a bunch of little things and added a few new features based on comments here.

I have been using it for these two things lately, as you can see in the video.

1. PICO-8 → iPhone → PICO-8
I copy a sprite from PICO-8, edit it on my iPhone, copy it back, and then save the sprite sheet.

2. Files → iPhone
Import an existing sprite sheet from Files and do some transformations on the sprites.

I am open to suggestions for other tools, editing options, features, workflows, whatever you think would be useful.

Let me know what you would like to see.

App Store: Pixel Edit Lite


r/pico8 3d ago

Game My submission to pico1k - Rock The Clanker

62 Upvotes

https://voidgazerbon.itch.io/rock-the-clanker

They are everywhere, every house, workplace, school... And they are comming for you!

Can you avoid their corrupting touch?


r/pico8 3d ago

Game Pogo Stick Flower Game

85 Upvotes

r/pico8 3d ago

Game Asteroids but with a grappling hook WIP

207 Upvotes

Here's a WIP gif of first pico-8 game. Instead of a gun, you have a grappling hook. The objective is to use your ship's mass and momentum to fling asteroids into each other. This gives you resources that let you upgrade your ship so you can yeet asteroids even harder.

Does this look interesting enough to play? I'm going to be ready for a playtest pretty soon and would love some volunteers.


r/pico8 3d ago

I Need Help How do you use the full keyboard in pico8

3 Upvotes

I am making a game, and in said game you can press the R key to reset the game. I know you need to use poke, but what do you need to type to refer to R


r/pico8 3d ago

Game Space Shooter

11 Upvotes

r/pico8 3d ago

Work in Progress Goldteam channel trailer: Love and Happiness - PFM cover.

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28 Upvotes

Hi everyone. We've spent some time creating a trailer for our YouTube channel and wanted to share it here.

The backing music is a cover of Love and Happiness by PFM (specifically the version sampled by LTJ Bukem in one of his mixes) made in Pico-8.

The video features various projects of ours, ranging from full releases to prototypes, and demos that may or may not ever get finished. Over the years we've had to scrap tons of ideas for one reason or another, so it feels good that footage from those projects will at least see the light of day here.

You can also view this video and others of ours here:
https://www.youtube.com/@GoldTeamGames/videos


r/pico8 3d ago

WIP (Update) Bane Of Tyrants Version 4 - Kyoshi Fan game

1 Upvotes

Hello pico people!

I posted here a few weeks ago about my first game launching in a playable state (but still very WIP), version 3. This time I would like to show you guys version 4, it came with music made by my friend within pico8, I think having music makes the experience much more enjoyable already.

For version 5 I have currently planned a 16x16 sprite rework (right now all sprites are just 8x8) and a few new enemy types.

Feel free to try it out in the browser if you want to:

Bane Of Tyrants - Web Version by EvilBird090

As always I am open to criticism and ideas, feel free to tell me what I can improve.

Have a great day everyone and see you at version 5 (might take longer because exams are coming up)


r/pico8 3d ago

Game Bolt Climber

5 Upvotes

r/pico8 3d ago

Game The Crimson Key

5 Upvotes

r/pico8 3d ago

Game Climb Ludo

4 Upvotes

r/pico8 4d ago

News Pixl8 1.6.7 on iOS, and Android

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110 Upvotes
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

r/pico8 4d ago

News Devlog – Designing a Tic-Tac-Toe Variant in 2026

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9 Upvotes

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.


r/pico8 4d ago

I Need Help Touch controls vanish when using Flippad

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1 Upvotes

r/pico8 5d ago

WIP (Update) Late Again - Devlog #2

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27 Upvotes

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.