Hi everyone,
Pico Lake is a small Walk & Click adventure game in a single PICO-8 cart.
Instructions
- Walk around using the arrow keys / d-pad.
- Press z for an action menu. Select a verb to see available items you can interact with. Note that these options depend on your current position, actions performed and inventory.
- You can save and restore your progress in the pause menu (press Enter)
Thanks
Thanks @zep for creating such a wonderful digital environment! Shoutouts to the PICO-8 community for all the helpful tutorials and inspirational work. Hi to all the nice Point & Click Devlog discord people. Special thanks to Adam Bradley and Charles DeCarlo for their help and "Jimmy" for coining the term "Walk & Click".
Have a good day!
Hahaha thats pretty funny. I was stuck quite a few times, but well done.
Nice scenes and sense of humor.
Yay, congrats on finishing it! 🥳
That was a fun pico-adventure 😁👍
#FoundItInTheEnd 📱
This was great, such a nice nostalgia trip and really super clean menu system for the game. Very well done!
got it to the end (thanks source code... x] )
Neat engine you've got! (and sure it could be made much more generic to avoid harcoded conditions/transitions!)
Thanks for the kind words people, it's my first Pico-8 game and it's really cool that you all played it till the end! I was actually hoping people would get stuck every now and then, but not for too long so you won't give up.
@freds72 the engine could have been more generic for sure, but I also like that Pico-8 development allows for some hacky / to the point solutions and still keep my sanity when creating and debugging :)
For what it's worth, I definitely got stuck on the final puzzle - cute little adventure game! I like the graphics a lot.
Thanks, @packbat, appreciate it!
In hindsight, nobody probably needed the save / restore game function as I think most complete it in one go. Which is good (although, the function was invaluable for me during debugging / testing).
I loved this. I usually am terrible at this style of adventure game (the larger, longer classic ones from the past...), but I managed to persevere and finish this smaller scope one in this style. Very charming!! I loved the ending. Won't spoil it for anyone.
@Pavilion Debugging is important! And hey, now you have a save/restore function to scavenge for future carts if you need it.
@Pavilion I'm glad you had the save game feature, cause for someone who gets frustrated with this type of game easily, it enabled me to step away for a minute and come back without the discouragement that would come from starting all over again.
@gradualgames Good to hear! And yep, playing adventure games can get quite frustrating. But it can also be rewarding when you finally solve a puzzle after getting stuck for a while.
@packbat yes, that's true and it can also be beneficial for a multi-cart adventure game in the future.
Good work. I get Zak McKracken and the Alien Mindbenders vibes all of a sudden.
I would be interested to know what tools you use to plan out and create the scenes.
@JimB007 Thanks! On tools and setting up a scene:
I use Aseprite to draw a scene and convert it using a hacky javascript tool into a data string containing 16 bit segments. First 4 bits for the color and the next 12 bits for how long this color repeats horizontally. The engine can draw multiple layers on top of each other to let the player move behind objects.
Then I make another layer in Asesprite with hotspots. That layer defines the walkable area and color-coded objects (door, table, etc) and also whether specific layers need to be drawn in front or behind the player.
Hope this makes some sense!
Very nice game and character animation.
I got stuck at the vets office though.
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Great job! Might have had to have a look at the code to get to the end :D
Great game!
I got stuck for a while at the vet office but I really enjoyed the experience!
Played this yesterday, the first Pico-8 game I ever played. I enjoyed it so much I just bought the Pico console. Great little game!
Amazing work! Feels nice and smooth, instant feel of good ol' point and click games.
Looking forward more like this!!
@Thunder1000 If you're stuck at the park at 56 points, you can:
You can also check the source code in the start_state function, where all steps are listed!
I'm stuck at 43 points. What do I have to
Edit: I got past that part but I don't know what to do at the vet's office
i spent way too much time looking for birdcage. Game is really good
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Ok,I got the sponge. In my reasoning, I could fill the sponge with water from the lake and wipe the glass on the restaurant. I dunno how to get the sponge wet.
I finally got to the end. I really enjoyed it. It reminded me of those classic Sierra and LucasArts games. I only wish it was longer!
You’ve created a really good adventure game engine that works so well with the constraints of Pico-8. I hope we’ll see some more adventure games in the future.
I'm late to the party but I really enjoyed this one. Beautiful art, very chill game. And I managed to get to the end! I really feel like this sort of game is good fit for Pico-8.
I was wondering if you used a puzzle dependency graph to help design your puzzles?
@MegaDeuce Glad, you enjoyed it! I wanted the main character to end up in situations that at first felt like drifting away from a simple goal (finding your phone), but then in the end everything happened for a reason and was apparently needed to find what you were looking for.
I didn't draw an actual puzzle dependency chart. But for the script, I drew a map of the environment first and wrote the puzzles by joining some smaller separate scenarios together. And then iterate until it had no dead ends. In the final stage, I added hints and signposting to guide the player.
Got through it without reading the comments. You have to do some wacky stuff to get the receptionist to see the bird.
Nice game, @Pavilion ! Gold star.
I don't understand what I'm supposed to use to pick up the bird, there's the plastic wrap which was around the sponge, but you can't get it. P.S. I'm at 36 points
I beat it
I used help from youtube because i couldnt manage to beat it myself
Really enjoyed this game and played it all through being an adventure games fan. Nice clean art and good controls. First pico game I tried as I never heard about it, so I went and bought the engine right after to make some games.
What a wonderful game. Really enjoyed it. Thanks for your hard work!
This is an excellent Pico-8 point-and-click, or walk-and-click, game. It feels very polished, and the puzzles were challenging enough to take a little bit of thinking, but I never felt really frustrated. The very end was the only place where I felt lost. I'm not sure how I beat the game. I ran out of ideas, so I was just going down the list using everything, and all of a sudden I was back at the park sitting on the bench. I'm not sure what combination of uses and looks actually did the job.
I think the menu and interaction system really shined. It was perfect for keyboarding this kind of game. Two small things I would like to see are the ability to view your inventory, and menu wrapping so pressing up at the top of a list wraps to the bottom, and same for going in the other direction.
I feel like the individual parts of your engine, such as the menu system and the dialog boxes, could be very useful to other Pico-8 devs.
Just played and beat the game on my first try. What a lovely little adventure. Got stuck once, but used the old lucasarts mentality of try everything and persevered through. I'd love to see more games using your engine. Well done!
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