I want to download games and run them without paying pico 8 or splore
how do I do that?

I know how to download them, but the problem is that I have no way of running it
can I just rename it to zip or exe file?

Sometimes the game developers post executable binaries on itch.io and sometimes they make them available for free. But not every game (probably most games) on splore can be found on itch.io, so your selection will be much more limited.

I assume you're downloading a .p8.png file from the BBS, and want a way to play it offline without PICO-8. No, you cannot just rename the file and run it like a standalone app.

There's an open source PICO-8 game player called picolove. I have no idea how well it supports modern games, but the project has had recent activity.

If the author of the game has not distributed their game as a standalone app, the only good way to make a standalone app for a game is with PICO-8 itself. PICO-8 can play the game, and it can export it as a desktop app (Windows, Mac, Linux) or as a standalone web page.

If you really dig into it you might be able to rip the exported .js file for a game from the BBS and recreate the browser player as something that can run on your computer without an Internet connection. You'll need some knowledge of how web pages work, and some tenacity.

There are some emulators with various degrees of compatibility: zepto8, retro8, tac08, picolove.

How do I play the games offline? I have the native console and have tried to download the games from Splore, but I can´t find it.

@Picokjell On my machine, carts from Splore get downloaded to the .lexaloffle/pico-8/bbs/carts folder in my home directory. I'm on Linux, so the path may be different for Windows or Mac.

splore does two things: browse carts from the bbs, browse local carts

if you download carts offline (with the little icon on bottom-left of the player in the bbs page, or from itch.io), you should put them in your carts directory (see https://www.lexaloffle.com/dl/docs/pico-8_manual.html#_File_System), then you’ll see them with splore!

@merwork and @2bitchuck thanks for the replies!
I see this works with a computer. Where do you place the carts on your handheld console so that Splore can detect them? Thanks! : )

@Picokjell That's going to vary from device to device, so you'd probably need to look up instructions for your particular device. I don't tend to launch downloaded games via Splore on handhelds though, I just launch them from the main interface that the handheld uses.