Awesome PICO-8 
A curated list of PICO-8 resources, tutorials, tools and more.
Inspired by the awesome list thing.
You might also like awesome-lua and awesome-love2d.
PICO-8 is a fantasy console for making, sharing and playing tiny
games and other computer programs. When you turn it on, the machine
greets you with a shell for typing in a subset of Lua commands and provides simple
built-in tools for creating your own cartridges.
Contents
DemoScene
Resources
Tutorials
- Sprite
Editor - Keyboard only 8x8 pixel art tool.
- pico2png -
Spritesheet extraction written in perl.
- Spritesheets
and tools for the PICO-8 Palette - Compilation of works assest and
tools using the PICO-8 palette.
- Pico8Utils -
Compilation of lua scripts based on the unix philosophy for working with
.p8 files.
- picotool -
Tools and Python libraries for manipulating Pico-8 game files.
- p8dl - Carts Downloader
- Python - Downloads cartridges into the correct folder (looks at
your config.txt).
- Pico-8
Carts Downloader - Bash - Downloads cartridge from the BBS (single
cart, whole index or dump your favourited entries) & rename them
according to their metadata.
- p8
responsive webplayer transform - Python script that makes your HTML
export page responsive.
- Color
Palette - Hex and RGB colors codes for web.
- PICO-8 font -
by RhythmLynx.
- P8Coder - A
programming tool that replaces the lua code in pico-8 cartridges (p8)
with the code you write in P8Coder.
- picoDeploy -
Deploy Pico-8 carts as standalone applications on desktop (Electron) and
mobile (Ionic).
- pico8Grunt -
A build system for pico8 games, using gruntjs.
- PICO-EC - A tiny
scene-entity-component library created for the PICO-8 fantasty
console.
- p8 - A dependency
manager and build tool. Lets you share code/sprites,
require() dependencies, and auto-reload carts on save.
Works with any external code editor and supports MoonScript.
- MIDI to
PICO-8 - A tool to convert MIDI files to PICO-8 music.
- midi2pico - A
MIDI to PICO-8 converter.
- Denote - Converts MIDI
files into SFX data– interactive and web based.
- Custom
template - A simple and clean template, that fixes issues with
fullscreen, mouse and just looks nice.
- Fillp
Tool - A simple helper tool for generating fillp patterns.
- Depict - Converts
image into a dithered image using PICO-8 colors and reduces it to a
maximum size of 128 x 128.
- picoCAD - A PICO-8
program to build and texture lowpoly 3D models.
- pico8-deploy
- An easy way to export and deploy PICO-8 projects to itch.io
- yap8b - Build tool
for creating pico carts from multiple source files.
- TS-PICO-8 -
Create PICO-8 games using TypeScript.
- Shrinko8
- A minifier that aggressively shrinks Pico-8 code size. Also includes a
linter and other tools.
Libraries
- pico-test -
PICO-8 testing framework.
- Lib-Pico8 - A
Pico-8 library of useful common functions.
- pico8-missing-builtins
- Provides Lua built-in functions to pico8.
- Pico-Kit - An
opinionated collection of Pico-8 helpers that make it easier to get
going. Adds OOP, better debugging, and physics.
- PICO-Tween -
A small library of tweening/easing functions for use in the PICO-8
fantasy console, inspired by Robert Penner’s easing functions.
- parens-8 - Bypass
the Lua token limit with a tiny lisp interpreter/compiler.
- p8-canvas - A
high performance infinite canvas/texture library.
Assets
Text Editors Language
Support
- Visual Studio Code: pico8-ls - PICO-8 Language
Server, providing full language support for the PICO-8 dialect of
Lua.
- Atom: language-pico8
- Sublime: Sublime
PICO-8 - PICO-8 plugin for the Sublime Text editor (color scheme,
font, build system, code completion, snippets…).
- Vim: vim-pico8-syntax
- Emacs: pico8-mode
Programming Fonts
You might be interested to install pico-8
programming fonts they support the pico-8 custom characters as well
as various fonts (bitmap and regular anti-aliased fonts). Check the BBS thread
here.
How to install the font(s):
- Linux: copy the files on ~/.fonts and
sudo fc-cache -f -v
- Windows: copy the files on c:/windows/fonts/
Hacks - undocumented
PICO-8 features
- Mouse - How
to retrieve mouse coordinates (with demo).
- p8keyboard.js -
Javascript “keyboard adapter” for the Pico-8. Send ASCII characters to a
Pico-8 program running in a browser.
- SFX
Modifications - Four effects that can only be applied by modifying
memory (with demo).
- Tracker
State/Audio Memory Locations - How to access and modify audio data
as it is playing.
Hardware
- GameShell - A modular
handheld game console that allows you to play & modify retro games
and DIY new devices. Check the GameShell
Docs for how to run PICO-8 on the GameShell.
- PocketChip - A handheld
designed for playing and coding anywhere. Officially supported by
pico-8. PoketChip
version of pico-8
Articles & Posts
Talks
- Sharing the
love - Making games with PICO-8. linux conf au 2017 - Hobart,
Australia
Clones
- TIC-80 by Nesbox - Tiny
Computer, available on HTML 5, Windows, Linux 32/64bit, Android &
MacOSX
- PicoLove - Pico-8
Reimplementation in LÖVE.
- LIKO-12 - An
open source fantasy computer made using LÖVE with 96kb RAM.
- Pikuseru -
Open Source Fantasy Console in pure Rust [Core].
- tac08 - tac08
is an emulation of the runtime part of the Pico-8 fantasy console,
running on RG350 handheld game console.
- LowRes NX - Fantasy
Console available on IOS, MacOS, Windows, Linux, and GameShell (BASIC
code support)
I Want to Contribute!
Great! :smiley:
Please, read the contribution
guidelines first.
License
To the extent possible under law, Felipe Bueno has waived all
copyright and related or neighboring rights to this work.
See LICENSE for more information.
PICO8.md
Github