In my previous post, I mentioned how I recently stumbled upon the PICO-8. I also stumbled upon this YouTube video that outlines game development on the PICO-8, and it captured my curiosity and interest. It turns out that the creator of the YouTube video put out a 72-page zine full of tutorials for the basics of the editors and commands you can run, along with full tutorials for developing various games. The first game in the tutorials is called Cave Diver, which is like a clone of Flappy Bird. One of the many cool things about PICO-8 is that you can try out the games right here in your browser. So, have a crack at my implementation of it right here! If you have a PICO-8, you can also save the below cart image to your device and play it natively.
Thus far I've been thoroughly enjoying game development on the PICO-8. In the past I've attempted game development with LibGDX due to my familiarity with the JVM and Android, and more recently with Godot, but for some reason they felt a bit overwhelming to me. I suppose when I compare my work with typical games I'd purchase on Steam or the Nintendo Switch, the delta between what I can make and what I can buy is so great that I feel discouraged. With PICO-8 though, the constraints imposed by the platform make that delta feel much smaller, and it inspires me to want to continue. I don't foresee myself sticking with the PICO-8 in the long run as the only platform I develop for, but for now I am looking forward to continuing the tutorials in the aforementioned zine and then building a few games of my own!