My son (11) and my (42) first Pico-8 release, emphasized learning the system over real playability. A ton of fun to make. Source code is available via Lefty vs. Brainless Skulls Github repository. We also listed it on the cmcavoy itch.co.
Gameplay is very basic, run around, shoot the skulls. The skulls jet around in random directions. We added a health counter and limited bullets to make it at least a bit more interesting. A couple of things that we learned that were particularly revelatory - collision detection, game state (having a startup screen) and animation pacing (though Lefty himself needs a bit of work). Map drawing took a while to wrap our heads around. The (simple) math around screen pixels to map tiles had us stumped for a while.
We were new to Lua as well, so only recently learned that there's object-oriented sugar we can add to the code. We plan on refactoring to objects as a next step with the intent of adding better "brains" to the brainless skulls and the ability to fool around with additional actors and weapons. That said, we may put Lefty aside and move on to some less-shooty games. Neither of us is particularly fond of shooting, it's just a simple game to build.
All in all, we're thrilled with Pico-8, this is a really fun community. Can't thank you all enough for the amount of documentation and tips we've picked up in the forum and in the 'zines!
Thanks! C&WMcAvoy
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