itch.io

Randomly found this on my hard drive from when I downloaded it - still such an absolute banger. The framing device is so good.

We love this game so much. Almost always one we go back to play again when we replay Adamant Gambit games.

Oh, this is interesting! I like the theming and the Renown mechanics - the line “even the desperate will not trust you” establishes a really interesting atmosphere that I want to lean into.

Libraries good!

I believe face cards count for 10.

What a cool mechanical concept! Good writing, too - I appreciate all the chaos.

thank you for listening, and for saying so!

thanks! the new library building is nice but we still remember the old one

the way the names work is really clever!

thanks! it has, and we appreciate it. :D

We semi-accidentally started a solo TTRPG book club on the fediverse, and “Princess with a Cursed Sword” was the first game all of us played. It was super super fun to talk about the game and read others’ playthroughs! We had some good conversations with folks about how its mechanics shape the tone of the stories we told. Our own playthrough ended up on the dark end of those we saw, but we had a good time with it.

I think if I understand you, yes - the way a Bitsy game works, you have the initial title text in a box with a blank background, then you play through the part of the game with screens that you move your character through, then you have the epilogue text in a box with a blank background, and then it goes completely blank. When the title comes up again, that’s you back at the beginning again.

Thank you! We’re really proud of how much we got done on as short a time as we had to finish!

Name: Star Courier. Code: 92200

Genre: Arcade Theme: Space Platform: IM-98 Feature: FMV Feelies: Journal

An action game where you dodge asteriods, fire from enemy ships, and more to traverse the space between the stars and deliver your vital packages.

Release Year: 1991

Time to Beat: 13 days. This is definitely from the era where they used difficulty to stretch out playtime - fortunately, we had some friends willing to hang out with us while we streamed playing it and give pep talks.

Notes:

The IM-98 CD-ROM attachment was a late addition in the history of the machine, and opened up space for a few early FMV games to release on the console, like Star Courier. It’s clear that playing video used up almost all the power of the processor, but they got around it by having video windows pop up during breaks in the action. The game is essentially a rail shooter without the shooting - obstacles and enemies are sprites that pop up in front of you, grow, and then fly (hopefully) past you, and you move your ship around the plane of your screen to dodge them. Some objects do move diagonally, and it uses the limited color capacity of the IM-98 to highlight them as they near you. The story is pulpy and the acting is campy, but it’s still a neat experience if you’re willing to die a lot to get through it.

The booklet included with Star Courier is something of a highlight - it’s a fictional research log by a scientist investigating a strange new element. The urgency of the rest of it - and how dramatically your ship explodes when struck - makes a lot more sense if you read this first.

we never read the story but this takes something better from it than most responses we’ve seen and we appreciate that

This was so effective. What a series of events.

glad we could share it!

Oooh, the way you interleaved the percussion in Midnight Oil was super clever - these are great tracks!

New Beginning is so good! And I love the pair of Storytime and Cursed Storytime!

Nice pieces! I think Shadowfall is my fave - it has a cool tense atmosphere!

Really neat rhythms! Thanks for sharing all these!

Love the break in the middle! Delightful piece!

Sorry, belated question: do other PICO devs have permission to use these? The purpose of the jam was to provide free music to devs to put in their carts - if that’s not what you want, it doesn’t belong in the jam.

Cute piece! Very well-chosen title - it does feel like what would play in a town or something.

Oh, belated question: do you know what license you would like to release this under?

I like the choice of accompanying music.

May you get what you deserve and may they get what they deserve.

Thank you for all your work and for keeping us all updated - I definitely would not want to be blindsided by an unexpected change like that, but Medical Aid for Palestine sounds like a good organization to support and I appreciate your getting that organized.

Adventure on the Garden Planet is cool! Haven’t downloaded the others to check them out, but thanks for submitting!

Oooo, cool piece!

Oooh, cool visualizers and tunes!

I’m still stunned that you pulled this off. Good job!

Apologies in advance for deleting your comment; we’re aware that a tokiponist exists who uses our sitelen pona characters to translate a far-right webcomic, but they deserve to rot in obscurity so we shan’t give them any publicity about it.

Good stuff! Solid horror vibes.

Not sure what to use as a cover image? Feel free to ask for help and/or hash out ideas here!

Pro tip: Wikimedia Commons and Flickr both have good tools for filtering search results by language. Taking a photograph, cropping it to a square, and running it through a tool like bikibird’s Depict is a really effective way to get something evocative without a lot of effort.

That was quite fun! Good jam game!

If the educational version works for you, sure! The important part is that your music is in a form that PICO-8 devs can copy into their carts - whatever tools you find comfortable to use for that purpose are fine.

Ooo - just reading this, I immediately love how flipping heads means both good and bad outcomes. Definitely interested to try this!

No worries! Glad to be of service!

A friend linked to this and we’re all talking about giving it a try - thanks for putting this out there!

Small bit of feedback: hollow point bullets are are actually less able to punch through armor than other kinds of bullets, not more. Just poking around on the Internet, there’s a kind of US military armor-piercing ammo that’s referred to as “Black tip”, which might be a cool name? I don’t know, just wanted to point out that hollow point bullets are not armor piercing.

Unrelated to bullets: the Turmoil mechanic is really interesting! That sounds like a really fun dynamic to try to lean into.

I dunno if anyone has any questions about the jam, about music, or about PICO-8, and you can always start your own thread, but here’s an all-purpose thread for asking and answering!