itch.io

Very fair! Here’s a longer version of the instructions, if it helps:

The goal is to keep driving (with arrow keys) as long as possible. Clear checkpoints by driving through them before the timer runs out; the game ends when a checkpoint timer reaches 0.

The gauge at the top shows how long you can keep driving. To refill it, you need fish. Hit c to cast your line. When you hear the alert noise and see the “!!” hit c again to reel in a fish.

Casting your line uses the momentum of the car, so the faster you’re going, the further you’ll cast. (I think this is what confuses most people.) You also always fish in the direction you’re driving, so you have to line up the whole car to aim. Bite timing and fish size are random, but if I remember correctly, you’re more likely to get a big fish from deep water (the parts that look choppy).

The only thing the difficulty affects is how much time you have to hit each checkpoint. So you can practice steering and fishing on the lowest difficulty and then increase it as hitting checkpoints gets easier. :)

If you laughed with recognition when you read the title, play this game immediately. It’s exactly what you’re hoping.

I loved playing this at BBC! Feels like it has a similar goal to I’m a Game Please Pick Me Up but I think this more complex execution works better. Thanks for bringing it!

this rules, thank you for making it. I’d love to see double-sided print support some day – or at least let me export to a single pdf I can print on both sides instead of two separate single-page pdfs

nice! I’ve heard a couple of people got in that range and I agree that it’s very hard to get further (although it’s possible, I’m pretty sure, with perfect play)

it’s on the BBS! :) I’ll add it to downloads over here in a sec.

https://relsqui.itch.io/snakeout

Got this silly idea a couple of weeks ago and appreciating how easy pico-8 makes it to go from silly idea to silly execution.

High score thread! My longest snake with the current version of the mechanics (and without using debug tools) is 32 segments.

how do you interact with anything in this game when it’s in desktop mode? how do you change settings or quit in any mode? I tried it for a couple of minutes in each mode and had to force quit. I can’t tell if it’s broken or the UI is too well hidden for me.

That makes sense, thank you! Looking forward to playing more and also trying that out.

This is a brilliant bit of game design. I love how gently the puzzles guide you into understanding each rule, so far I’ve never felt lost but still feel clever when I get a new one. Do you have any advice about tuning the difficulty in that way? It’s something I really admire in games that do it well but struggle with creating.

I’d also really enjoy this!

I noticed the community copies had run out so I bought a few extras. :) Can you put them in the free pile please?

Thank you! You might like other sok-stories games. :)

this post was indeed helpful for that, and also as a recommendation for this game. :) but how do you open a game in edit mode? I don’t see a way to do that from the web interface, and I don’t know how to search for a specific game in the desktop app.

edit: never mind, found it! I was just browsing through the randomizer at the beginning of the app, I didn’t realize that if I go further into the edit screen I can also search the shared library from there.

Congratulations! I love your work and admire your steady pace – you must be masters of scoping. :)

This is really fun! I just tried out a bunch of different games, and this is the first one I came back to afterwards because I didn’t feel done with it yet. I like how the different kinds of limited information balance each other out, and all the cute icons. I’m a big fan of minesweeper-but-you’re-on-the-ground type games and there aren’t enough of them!

A couple of wishlist items, in case you’re looking to keep working on this:

I wish there was more variety and sense of progress between levels. Different sizes, shapes, or mine counts would be great, but just visual themes would go a long way. Relatedly, would be fun to find things in the open grassy areas sometimes, whether that was functional or just flavor. If I’m going to have to walk around, I want that to matter, y’know?

A bunch of flag things: I wish I could flag squares without the mouse, although I’m not sure how that would work. As other people have said, it would be nice to be able to flag free spaces. I like that the flagged squares are consistently different colors (I’m using the ? flag to mark free spaces) but I wish the unflagged squares were a third color, so those categories were all distinct from each other.

Oh, and the blinking sprite is kind of annoying, but I do see the problem it’s solving and don’t have a better idea. (Maybe a little thought bubble from the sprite with the number it’s standing on?)

Last and least: a confirmation button for going downstairs would be nice. It’s startling to step onto a new board when I haven’t even seen the stairs yet.

game devs need to pay rent too

That’s fair, sorry about that! The buttons in Pico-8 games are part of the engine, it’s not something I can change unfortunately, but I’ll keep that in mind if I do a new version. :)

You sound like exactly the target audience and I’m so glad you found and enjoyed it!

I have a sea captain friend who has been (mostly jokingly) trying to convince me to implement wind direction to make sailing more complicated, they’d be delighted by that last idea. 😁 And yeah, strong agree about the rest, that was definitely in the plans and I just didn’t end up making enough time during the jam for it. Plenty of time now though, so who knows! Thanks for playing. :)

Yeah, I agree both about music and that it’s too easy – I wanted to make sure people could actually get the bossfight, and it was hard to gauge tuning when I’ve been testing with debug settings on, haha. If I find the energy to do more work on it after the jam I’ll be tweaking a lot of that stuff. Thanks for playing!

Nice!!

Don't feel in a hurry, none of my other attempts even got close  -- I think I got pretty lucky with my ingredients that round!

Oh man, this is really fun and I feel like I'm just starting to get the hang of it. Best game score 354, best cake score 111, that'll do for now. :)

Edit: Okay, now best game/cake is 675/362 and I feel a bit more pleased with myself.

Thanks very much!

Thanks Jupiter!

This is terrific, thank you! :D Glad you had fun, even if it took a little adjusting. There really should be a difficulty level in between Tourist and Adventurer -- I'm not sure if there's room in the cart for it but I'll take another peek and see if I can find it, you're definitely not the first person who would've liked it, haha.

Thanks Leaf! I'm pleasantly surprised how well the combination worked out, haha. 

https://relsqui.itch.io/the-fish-and-the-furious

Introducing the Fish and the Furious, a Pico-8 driving-while-also-fishing game.  Race to hit the checkpoints while catching enough fish to keep your car fueled! You can even play with a buddy (not pictured here because I'm not coordinated enough to record that).

Indeed. This is why I always mix it up; I'm not choosing or thinking about them especially. :P I'm pretty much determined that next time I'll just put the letters in the game, though, or perhaps both. It annoys Pico-8 folks but that seems worth it in order to make it so other people can figure out how to play!

I'm delighted to announce Dragondell, a cute retro stealth adventure written for the Pico-8 and playable in your browser on itch.io. Avoid the knights (or roast them with fireballs), collect the treasure, and get all the royals back to their home castles.

I'm trading development trivia for RTs on Twitter right now. Take a gander if you're curious, or if you'd be kind enough to signal boost!

Oh heck I ALWAYS get this backwards. I'll fix it.

This is super satisfying to play on a touchscreen. The difficulty seems well-balanced -- I played a bunch and won once, which feels about right. Winning was a little anticlimactic, and I agree with the idea of quests (or other structure/variety), but in general this is really impressive and fun.