Hey people, today (as promised a week ago, or something like that) we are going to talk about free alternatives to Pico8. Most of them are still in development or lack some features, while others are really well made, open source and updated regularly. Ok, let’s gets started.

Liko-12

Probably the first open source Pico-8 alike game maker.

LIKO-12 is an open source fantasy computer completely written in the Lua programming language where you can make, play and share tiny retro-looking games and programs.

The LIKO-12 fantasy computer comes with a default, fully customizable, DOS-like operating system installed, called DiskOS, which provides an environment with basic command line programs and visual game editors.

Games are stored as disk files that can be saved, shared and uploaded to pastebin via the built-in program.

Specifications:

Spec Info CPU LuaJIT (Lua 5.1) GPU 192x128 4-Bit Screen Map 144x128 Cell (255 Tile) HDD 144x128 Cell (255 Tile) Input Keyboard, Mouse, Touch, and Gamepad

Here are some important links:

Tic-80

TIC-80 is a fantasy computer for making, playing and sharing tiny games.

There are built-in tools for development: code, sprites, maps, sound editors and the command line, which is enough to create a mini retro game. At the exit you will get a cartridge file, which can be stored and played on the website.

Also, the game can packed into a player that works on all popular platforms and distribute as you wish. To make a retro styled game the whole process of creation takes place under some technical limitations: 240x136 pixels display, 16 color palette, 256 8x8 color sprites, 4 channel sound and etc.





Here are some important links:

Neko-8 (still in development)

Neko8 is a fantasy console, inspired by pico8, liko12 and tic80. It is open-source and fully free. Its goal is to be a fun and useful tool for game development and especially for game jams.

Specifications

Currently it features:

Pico8-like api



Code editor



Sprite editor



Map editor prototype



Terminal



Build-in API docs



Support for both lua and asm programming (planning add BASIC support)



Some easter eggs ;)





Here are some important links:

That’s all for today guys. See you in the next game jam!