Lexaloffle is the home of computer games and fantasy consoles made by Joseph White, whose principle mission is to seek out and explore mathematically cute sets of rules that somehow give rise to thematically cute game worlds.

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Lexaloffle History

Lexaloffle started out in my bedroom in 1993 as "Jazz Software", selling a shareware puzzle game called Tri that was distributed via mail-order shareware catalogues mostly in New Zealand. In 1996 it became "Pabagames", to release some more games for DOS: Groovy Ball, Rush, and Jasper's Journeys with my brother John White who is now carrying the Pabagames torch. After a break to go to university and work as a graphics programmer, I moved to Wellington to form Lexaloffle Games Ltd. in 2002 in a tiny office next to Embassy Theatre in Courtenay place. For the next 7 years, I scraped by on a combination of puzzle game releases (Neko Puzzle, Zen Puzzle Garden, Chocolate Castle), promotional games (Swarm Racer, Cat Cat Watermelon), a lot of miscelaneous contract work, and a remake of Jasper's Journeys with John. During this time, I unknowingly did a lot of foundational work on fantasy consoles, creating an in-house tool called Poido ("Pointy Dough") that included integrated sprite, voxel and audio design tools, with a matching C library called Codo ("Coding Dough"), and mockups for a virtual computer called LEX500.

In 2008 I moved to Japan to study music, and worked on building a modular synth and music mixer for future projects, as well as a custom BBS that would allow players to more easily share their puzzles online. I also prototyped some new games: Conflux, Swarm Racer 3000, and Voxatron as a minimal arena shooter. A preview trailer for Voxatron generated a lot of interest early 2011, and I quit the contract work I was doing to go all in, expanding the design to include voxel and world editing tools. The first version of Voxatron shipped in late 2011 as part of a pay-what-you-want bundle (the "Humble Voxatron Debut"). Around this time Lexaloffle became a Japanese partnership ("Lexaloffle Games LLP") with Natsuko White, and we opened Pico Pico Cafe to serve as a co-working space. In 2013, I needed scripting and sound tools for Voxatron and so resurrected the idea of LEX500 for this purposes, naming it after the cafe. So PICO-8 started as a minimal sandbox for Voxatron, but it quickly became clear that it would work well separately, and later that both systems could be thought of as some kind of console.

Pico Pico Cafe

Lexaloffle is located at Pico Pico Cafe in Kichijoji, Tokyo. Pico Pico operates as an event venue, and also a co-working space most Fridays ("Friday Studio"). If you find yourself in Tokyo looking for somewhere to write code or push pixels, or you just want to say hi, please drop by!

What Is a Lexaloffle?

A lexaloffle is a geometic creature which can fold up neatly into the union of two hexagons. It prefers to live in complex geometric spaces and eats polynomials for breakfast.