Pico Pirates is an open world adventure game featuring deadly monsters, rival pirates and beautiful sandy beaches!
You set out on your quest to find The Pirate King and claim the crown for yourself. To do this, you'll need to find the 4 compass pieces scattered around the vast, procedurally generated world and keep your crews spirits high throughout (pirates lovely treasure and a good fight!).
Art, programming, design
Craig Tinney
Music
Chris Donnelly
@Gruber_music
Special thanks
Daniel Caaz for their excellent font compression solution (https://8bit-caaz.tumblr.com/post/171492623783/rendering-a-font-from-a-layered-sprite-sheet-in)
Josh Richter for the constant testing and excellent ideas
Alex Wall <3
Follow me on Twitter for more Pico 8 goodies @ctinney94
Previous versions
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I love the sense of scale on the map. It feels like a real accomplishment to get to an island. The trails on the sand and the pulsating water around the islands are also very nice.
throw in a couple o' sea shanties, some buried treasure, and maybe some birds and fish, and this could be such a nice relaxing exploration game :)
also i must say i respect the bold choice to have a dedicated "show me the title of the game" button. not many games are doing that these days
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Oh woops, I did intend to remove the logo button before publishing since that was only to create a thumbnail and a cool promo pic on twitter.
Many thanks for the kind words :) I'd love to add some sea shanties but I have all the musical abilities of an egg. Maybe I can rope someone into giving me a hand with this down the line...
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Haha, this is surprisingly similar to a game I made a while back, got nowhere near as far with it though (https://www.lexaloffle.com/bbs/?tid=29751).
Looks cool, graphical effects are very nice. I'd love to play the full version with more to do.
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WOW! That feels like a very big map area. Demo feels great so far, and The effect with the trees to make them look 3d is great there. Good Job, keep working on it.
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This is really great.
I agree, the large scope of the map/world is really impressive.
Look forward to seeing where this goes! :D
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The cloud effect should probably be toggleable in the future,as they hurt my eyes a bit, maybe use waves to convey motion? That Flip() thing is neat.
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You made a lot of progress. This game really captures the feel of going on an adventure through a big unknown world. Well Done.
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Very well done sir!
The attention to detail is obvious (though the game clearly misses a shark plank :)
That said, some balancing might be needed.
I must say that I lost steam after my 8th canon and the 87456th island visited with only half a compass found :/
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Done in by Sushi. How embarrassing ...
Excellent game, definitely gets my star.
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Thank you all for the kind words!
Oddly enough, cannons are the rarest of any item in the game, so it is a little unusual to be lacking in compass pieces whilst drowning in cannons...
Currently chest loot works off a weighted random function with no intelligent balancing so whilst it is less likely to be put in the position that @freds72 describes, it certainly doesn't make it impossible.
Lack of variety is my biggest downfall of this project (at least imo) and the result of how I went about development. I'll have a full postmortem on my site in the near future with my full thoughts for anyone interested.
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Beautiful game! I haven't played all that much of it yet, but its already up there
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You should correct the typo saying "Maybe I shouldn't of been a pirate..." (it's "shouldn't have"), but otherwise, this is an awesome game! I'd almost compare its technical impressiveness and scope to Kirby's Adventure on the NES.
This is the PICO-8's Kirby.
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I defeated the Pirate King right after getting killed...did I win?
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I finally beat this one. Called myself 4 cannon Jones by the end. On account of I had 4 cannons.
I will say, the most annoying thing is the inertia and wind. Felt like most of the game I was just floudnering and being pushed around. But when I finally got a little control my strategy was to go diagonally, cutting corners so that I didn't hit the middle and accidentally run into a kraken, which also avoided most hostiles this way. Then I check the map frequently to find islands. Once I had 3 cannons encounters we no longer an issue. From then it was just "Yo ho ho" to the end.
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Lovely game. The inertia when sailing is a little frustrating, and I feel like movement could afford to be a little slower. But other than that the graphics are amazing, the pirate-y phrases are adorable, and defeating a sea monster is satisfying.
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Super great game!!Also I came across a ship called SS Dead Meme,has anyone else seen a ship called that?
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This is so great! It would be awesome to have land combat against other pirates or wild animals. Nonetheless, I give this game 5 out of 5 stars for challenge, fun, and a relaxing energy.
Edit: One suggestion. After you find 3 or more cannons, you're basically invincible and win fights instantly. Could enemies get harder as this happens to bring more of a challenge?
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I loved it!
Beat with 2 cannons on seed 24.
Pretty challenging at times, but once I finally got to the King, I held up.
My favorite mechanic is that you have the bird's eye ocean, but also some upright fights.
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"VICTORY ACHIEVED", there is nothing more rewarding than seeing that on your screen.
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This game is amazing! The last boss scared the crap out of me!
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I just beat it. I played on random seed. It was 88. My score was 7477. I had 5 cannons.
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