My first attempt at a PICO-8 game: Beam Clash

Published 2023-06-12


This is my first attempt at a PICO-8 game, and in fact my first full project with Lua altogether.

It's a simple Light Cycles type game, in that the goal is to not crash into the walls or either trail, and I tried to be fancy by having a running starfield in the background (Not really an original idea, if I'm honest, I've seen it in an Amiga light cycles game years ago).

I probably overshot myself by making this my first game, admittedly. In lieu of a layer system, I used the spritesheet as the arena layer, where the cycle lines were drawn, allowing me to maintain the moving starfield without losing those lines or having to work out how to redraw them. It basically means I can't use sprites, but then the nature of this game doesn't really demand them. Probably not the best way to do it, but it's how I figured it out. ^_^'

UP, DOWN, LEFT, RIGHT - Change direction (WARNING: pressing the opposite of your current direction is not a good idea!)
O - UI functions (Start the game, start a new round, return to title after the game is over.)