ekaktusz [Lexaloffle Blog Feed]

Groove 'n' Goods

Tue, 02 May 2023 11:40:29 UTC

Groove n Goods

by ekaktusz

[Click to Play]

Game created for Ludum Dare 53 with the theme "delivery".
Enjoy!

CONTROLS:

Movement: Arrow keys

Buying and selling: Cursor, drag and drop from the inventory

Restart cartridge: CTRL + R

Note: Click on the panda to buy stuff!

ABOUT:

You are the dealer at the club and your goal is to make as much money as you can before 6:00 AM; when the party ends. Buy some stuff from Bamboo Bandit, the big panda in the VIP section of the club. Click on him, choose what substance you want to buy.

After the purchase, deliver these to the people, they will let you know what they want!

If your ENERGY level reaches 0, its GAME OVER.

If your ANXIETY level reaches 100, its GAME OVER.

But fear not, consume whatever you want from your inventory and keep going. Just don't overdose!

How much money can you get?

BEHIND THE SCENES

The game was created as a submission for Ludum Dare 52 in the jam category. This was our thirdtime with a game jam together, and the second time on Ludum Dare.

This time we had a bit of a problem thanks to the 3 AM start time in CEST, so we started later, but in the end we had lot of fun again, and this time the work process was much smoother. We are more familiar with PICO, and we have a lot of code to steal from our previous games. The new thing for me was the use of the mouse cursor, and I think it turned out well.

We had a great time creating the game, and we hope you'll enjoy it. Thanks for playing!

MADE BY:

ekaktusz - Programming

Zahkros - Design, Art, Music

bartalomew - Design, Art

Mate Hirsch - Design

Music inspired by Jori Kemppi

Ursa Maior

Tue, 10 Jan 2023 15:17:20 UTC

Ursa Maior

by ekaktusz

[Click to Play]

Small narrative game created in PICO-8 for Ludum Dare 52. Tells an alternate story about the birth of the Ursa Maior star constellation.
Enjoy!

Controls

Arrow keys - Move the bear
(X) - Action key / Eat

Notes and Behind The Scenes

The game was created as a submission for Ludum Dare 52 in the jam category. This was our second time with a game jam together, and the first time on Ludum Dare. We were so excited to place 4th on Game Off, that we decided to try PICO-8 again.

We learnt a lot last time, and I was a little more familiar with PICO-8 and it's capabilities. I think we did great, we basically finished with every major thing we wanted, but some things (like changing the weather) had to be left out of the final game, because of the time limit. It's still very much playable, but definitely needs some refinement. The most challenging thing this time was probably the coding (I did it alone again) and solving the problem of sprites being rendered on top of each other on the map (mountains, trees etc.) to create better vibes, and with the collision detection for so many objects, which caused performance issues, which are mostly fixed in the final release (mostly...). The code is poor quality as well. I think this is a game jam thing, if you have to rush with everything, and you still fixing something critical in the last hour you have to accept that the code won't be the best.

Still it was really fun, and PICO-8 is an amazing tool, it feels amazing to build a game from the ground up without third-party assets. Next time we probably try something new, but we'll definitely come back to PICO-8 later. Thanks for reading the post!

Credits

Zahkros - Game design, Music, SFX
bartalomew - Game design, Art
ekaktusz - Programming

Special thanks to: Dzsodzso (helped with the art, website, and with basically everything) and for koeves for the music.

Elephant In The Room

Fri, 02 Dec 2022 12:31:41 UTC

Elephant In The Room

by ekaktusz

[Click to Play]

Small puzzle game created in PICO-8 for Github Game Off 2022. Help the mouse to leave the rooms by getting the elephant to break the door!
Enjoy!

Controls

Arrow keys - Move the mouse
(X) - Confirm, interacting
(O) - Reset map

On PC with a keyboard you can use the S key to toggle on "assisted mode", which helps you visualise the rules that are controlling the elephant.

Notes and Behind The Scenes

The game was created as a submission for Github Game Off 2022. This was our first time with a game jam and with PICO-8 as well.

We had a lot of challenges, with fitting that many levels in the map and with the limited sprite sheet. As for the coding part, I did it alone and I have never used Lua before. It was refreshingly simple at first (coming from C++), but as the game became more and more complex, I started to miss types, a debugger and OOP as well. At the end, I had a hard time with the token limit (bad design decisions and lack of knowledge in the beginning). Overall though, I've really enjoyed the challenges that PICO-8 had gave us during development and I'm definitely coming back. Crazy fun tool! We also started late and just finished before the deadline, so some bugs are known and expected (Will be updated though!).

Credits

Zahkros - Game design, Art, Music
ekaktusz - Programming
bartalomew - Level design, Art
Mate Hirsch - Level design, Game design
Lorinc Fazakas - Logo design, Game design