UPDATE: I've added a MINIMAP that you can access in-game by pressing X, which allows you to quickly view where you are and which items you still need to collect.
I retired from (game)programming about 18 years ago, but a few weeks ago I stumbled upon the wonderful PICO-8 and I could not resist giving it a try. This game is the result of that. It's a tribute to one of my favorite games when I was young, H.E.R.O., created by John van Ryzin. I expanded the original concept a bit, added a few new gameplay elements like keys and collectibles to give it a tiny bit of a Metroid vibe as well. I managed to cram in about 120 different screens but I think the game is still relatively easy to complete. It also features checkpoints, which allows you to continue playing from the last checkpoint when you die, even when you close and reopen the game. If it's still too difficult or you just wanna explore the map, you might want to look into the main Pico menu and look for an additional option I added :)
Enjoy!
fantastic game , couldnt have finished it without the map though ...
@bigjus Thanks. I’ve spent so much time designing and playtesting the levels that it was hard for me to judge how difficult it would be for someone else to navigate the map, so I included the map just in case :)
An in-game mini-map would be super-useful, though I'm not sure how you'd do it on pico-8.
@timeandspace That’s a good idea. I haven’t got many tokens left, so I would have to optimize the code to gain some tokens and find a way to generate some kind of minimap. If I decide to revisit this game this feature will be on top of the list.
This is really cool, nice one.
I used to play HERO when I was a kid on our family Atari 400.
Was a rather stressful game (especially the "dark" levels).
This brought back some fun memories, thanks! 👍
@Oleg They are four collectables that you need to open the last door. They’re supposed to look like a chest :)
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