In 2014 I releaed "Atoms" for iOS, based on a 1981 Sharp MZ80 game. Inspired by the recent release of Gone Fission, I dug up the story of how I found the developers of the original 1981 game.
gemini://s73.girv.in/glog/2025/2025-05-17-fundamental-atoms.gmi
https://s73.girv.in/glog/2025/2025-05-17-fundamental-atoms.html
Cattle Crisis /// Pico-8 Adventures ::: A #Pico8 #arcade #bullethell #shmup / #shootemup #indiegame by Krystian @krystman Majewski #indiedev ::: Let's save our cows from the hands of evil alien invaders!
» https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IBeOjRk70Iw «
My good irl buddy Rhys has only gone and made a real life Pico-8 game. Gone Fission!
It's every bit as addictive as it looks.
Go download & play & enjoy!!
What are you doing this lunchtime? My new game, Gone Fission, has been released. I'd love you to play it.
https://takaneichinose.itch.io/shroompeter
I created this game for Jam Gam #49.
This is just a simple rhythm game, where you just have to press the correct button.
I created this game using PICO-8
I have published the uncompressed, commented source code, describing the techniques I used to minimise the code.
https://dredds.itch.io/prime-time/devlog/945321/commented-source-code
A #Pico8 code minimisation tip that might be helpful if you are writing something for #TweetTweetJam:
Pico-8 defines 26 numeric globals with single-glyph names. Those numbers might be useful for something. Using the glyph takes only a single character, saving space compared to long literal values.
Here's a little Pico-8 program to print them all:
for k,v in pairs(_𝘦𝘯𝘷) do
if type(v) == 'number' then
printh(
k .. " = " ..
tostr(v,1) .. " / " ..
tostr(v)
)
end
end
A #Pico8 code minimisation tip that might be helpful if you are writing something for #TweetTweetJam:
Referring to an uninitialised variable is two characters shorter than using the nil keyword.
t[i]=nil (8 characters)
t[i]=z (6 characters)
You can use a character from the punyfont or kanji character set for the uninitialised variable to avoid accidentally using the name for something and breaking the logic.
A #Pico8 code minimisation tip that might be helpful if you are writing something for #TweetTweetJam:
Combining assignments into a single statement reduces token count but not character count:
x,y=1,2 (7 characters)
x=1 y=2 (7 characters)
You can remove whitespace between statements if doing so doesn’t merge the end of one and the start of the other into a single identifier:
x=1y=2 (6 characters)
Here is the final result: Prime Time https://dredds.itch.io/prime-time
Source in the following post...
Can you imagine living under constant existential threat? Crazy, right? Rock of Damocles submission to #tweettweetjam #pico8
https://voidgazerbon.itch.io/rock-of-damocles
Day 2 of TweetTweetJam 10! 35 participants and 7 entries so far!
Come make a game with only 500 characters of code!
Had a great time at https://lexplay.games/ yesterday showing a couple of my games! Really enjoyed meeting more local devs (including students with impressive projects), and seeing players of all ages having fun!
#gamedev #pico8
I trimmed it down to 624 characters...
A #Pico8 code golfing tip:
Iterating using the hidden next function:
for k,v in next,table do
is one character shorter than using the pairs API function:
for k,v in pairs(table)do
Working on a maths puzzle game for #TweetTweetJam 10. Catch the prime factors of the target number, avoid being caught by other numbers. Start with a target of 2. Can you reach 100?
471 bytes of #Pico8 ROM file. But 681 characters of source code. Trimming it down to 500 characters or less will be a challenge.
New game: Make Ten Deluxe! Select numbers that add to ten, easy. Then try dozens of wild variants -- 35+ modes
These are the most surprising, challenging, or otherwise delightful modes that I've made over the past year. Enjoy!
$10 / free demo (-20% sale!)
Cattle Crisis now on the itch frontpage! Wooo!
https://krystman.itch.io/cattle-crisis
