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It's $15 to be able to write programs for the platform, but you can export them to html5 to make available for others to play online for free. There's a pretty

It's $15 to be able to write programs for the platform, but you can export them to html5 to make available for others to play online for free. There's a pretty large library of such games hosted on pico-8's website. There are some open-source alternatives like TIC-80 and PixelVision8. Personally, I'd only recommend them over pico-8 if $15 is a serious barrier or open source is an absolute must. They all have their various strengths and weaknesses, but pico-8 seems to be the best optimized for pure, unadulterated fun.

roywiggins 6y ago
One downside of PICO-8's closed source is that it can't easily be ported to different architectures by fans, so you're limited to Windows, Linux (x86) and the Raspberry Pi (and HTML/JS, but just the player). There's no Android port. TIC-80, on the other hand, runs more places (Android!). And someone has ported it to run on OpenDingux portable handhelds, there's a RetroArch core, etc. That said, PICO-8 is super, super polished and absolutely worth the $15.
- mumblemumble 6y ago
  Also OS X, it's worth saying.
- NoodleIncident 6y ago
  In Celeste, there's an easter egg that lets you play the original PICO-8 game on an in-game computer. How was this accomplished, if porting it themselves isn't possible? Did they have to remake the entire game?
  - roywiggins 6y ago
    They might have built their own pico-8 runtime/emulator. Alternatively, porting the game to use another Lua runtime (like LÖVE) would probably not be that hard. Ex, here's a pico-8 runtime in LÖVE: https://github.com/picolove/picolove https://github.com/picolove/picolove
    - Wezl 6y ago
      It's a small game, they could port the entire game to another language or platform pretty easily.
  - jamesgeck0 6y ago
    Yeah, they remade the whole game with some help from the PICO-8 developer. https://twitter.com/MattThorson/status/1032067981600124928 https://twitter.com/MattThorson/status/1032067981600124928
- neomech 6y ago
  There is a pico8 emulator that lets you play games on some handheld console and I understand that an Android version is in development. https://0xcafed00d.itch.io/tac08-rg350 https://0xcafed00d.itch.io/tac08-rg350
- kzrdude 6y ago
  I paid for Pico. Mostly to play games on rpi, not making them. Being closed source is still a drag since I'm used to being able to patch and adjust the things I use. That I can't is immediately felt. Yeah and the alternatives like tic have pretty major setup problems on rpi.

roywiggins 6y ago

One downside of PICO-8's closed source is that it can't easily be ported to different architectures by fans, so you're limited to Windows, Linux (x86) and the Raspberry Pi (and HTML/JS, but just the player). There's no Android port. TIC-80, on the other hand, runs more places (Android!). And someone has ported it to run on OpenDingux portable handhelds, there's a RetroArch core, etc. That said, PICO-8 is super, super polished and absolutely worth the $15.

mumblemumble 6y ago
Also OS X, it's worth saying.
NoodleIncident 6y ago
In Celeste, there's an easter egg that lets you play the original PICO-8 game on an in-game computer. How was this accomplished, if porting it themselves isn't possible? Did they have to remake the entire game?
- roywiggins 6y ago
  They might have built their own pico-8 runtime/emulator. Alternatively, porting the game to use another Lua runtime (like LÖVE) would probably not be that hard. Ex, here's a pico-8 runtime in LÖVE: https://github.com/picolove/picolove https://github.com/picolove/picolove
  - Wezl 6y ago
    It's a small game, they could port the entire game to another language or platform pretty easily.
- jamesgeck0 6y ago
  Yeah, they remade the whole game with some help from the PICO-8 developer. https://twitter.com/MattThorson/status/1032067981600124928 https://twitter.com/MattThorson/status/1032067981600124928
neomech 6y ago
There is a pico8 emulator that lets you play games on some handheld console and I understand that an Android version is in development. https://0xcafed00d.itch.io/tac08-rg350 https://0xcafed00d.itch.io/tac08-rg350
kzrdude 6y ago
I paid for Pico. Mostly to play games on rpi, not making them. Being closed source is still a drag since I'm used to being able to patch and adjust the things I use. That I can't is immediately felt. Yeah and the alternatives like tic have pretty major setup problems on rpi.