A shump is a Shoot Em Up game and was one of the first genres of games I remember playing in an arcade. Playing with PICO-8 takes me back to programming games in BASIC when I was a kid. It’s a great little engine with a tiny constraints. There are only 8192 lines of code allowed in total using Lua scripting, and the sprite sheet is a mear 128x128 pixels in total. PICO-8, the “fantasy console,” has a deliberately limited set of tools that mimic the hardware and software limitations similar to gameboy color, but smaller.

The charm of PICO-8 lies in its restrictions: a 128x128 pixel display in 16 colors, 32 kilobytes of space for game code and data, a sprite editor, and a simple but powerful sound editor. These aren’t hindrances but rather the limitations take out the options that overwhelm creativity. They force you to think ingeniously, optimizing every line of code and pixel to bring your game to life. This limitation is the wellspring of innovation, where game design is distilled to its purest tiny form.

Creating a game in PICO-8 is a super fun journey. From conceptualizing and coding to designing graphics and composing music, this little programming environment has it all. The community around PICO-8 is amazing, offering a wealth of resources, tutorials, and shared games. Games published through Pico-8 are full source code. So games like Celeste are fully available through Splore, Pico-8’s tiny game browser. This ecosystem allows for sharing and learning, making game development an accessible and fun experience.

Playing the Game Below

Controls

Use the Arrow Keys and the X key to shoot.

Press the play button to start the game!