PICO-8
Beginners Course
Learn how to code and make games from the ground up!
PICO-8
Guide
Read all about PICO-8 in this API reference and glossary with detailed examples.
Pico-View
Webzine
Articles, news, and game recommendations from developers about every aspect of game dev!
Help support this website!
Thanks to our supporters on Ko-Fi, we can continue to invest our time to producing educational content and make it available for free. We are happy that so many students around the world can access our tutorials who wouldn't normally be able to afford it. So if you'd like to be a sponsor of our students, consider becoming a Ko-fi member of our site.
Our last Supporter Goal was to release a collection of collision tutorials, complete with collision functions you can copy right into PICO-8, an explanation of how they work, and examples of how they can be used in different types of games. The desire for these tutorials was even higher than we anticipated and even more have been requested. While preparing those, we have multiple projects in the works, including new resources specific to game design, and continuing our video lessons course.
Events
Game Design Jam April 2025
In April, we ran a special event where we hosted a Game Design Jam. Over 50 people joined the Jam and 15 people submitted their projects on time, 10 of them trying to win PICO-8. The normal join-to-submit rate on itch is only 10%, so the result was even more successful than I expected. The submissions were fantastic and we provided detailed feedback (average 1000 words) to each and every submission.
Thanks to our supporters, we were able to giveaway 10 full PICO-8 licenses to those participating for it!
If you missed this event, we are still accepting late submissions directly to our email, TheNerdyTeachers@gmail.com. You can still grab the template document and follow the details on the jam page to claim a free license of PICO-8!
Games Library
Curated Games Library
We have a searchable and sortable list of about 2000 of the best PICO-8 games. Easily browse to find exactly the style and genre of games you want to play!
Top 200 Games
Looking for the best games to play? Here are the top 200 highest rated games from 2015 to today. We even found the Top 200 games in the past year, the past 3 years, and past 5 years. This list is updated annually.Tutorials
Collisions
Collisions are tough and you have to build your own collision detection functions in PICO-8, but this gives you more control over your game!
Bitesize Games
These bitesize games are small barebones examples of some classic arcade style video games you already know. Follow along to understand the code behind them, then challenge yourself to modify the code and the art to make it your own.
Game Mechanics
Here we break down all the many juicy features you might want to add to make your game feel fun, polished, and complete. Find out how to add visual effects, animations, physics, and more.
Audio
Learn how to create and add Sound Effects and Music for your games with a musical legend of the PICO-8 Community: Gruber Music. We have included his free introductory tutorials and added written explanations as well as demo games to make it easier to follow along.
Hardware
Learn how to build, assemble, and/or set up PICO-8 to run on specific hardware devices.
Platformer Series
Our popular video series about building a platformer game is still accessible on the older version of our site until we update this series in the future.Community
Community Stars
Meet the most prominent devs in the community with this catalogue of mini-biographies.
Draw Pixel Art
Practice drawing your original PICO-8 pixel art right here in our website and share it with other Nerdy Students!
Sprite Library
Browse our community-made collection of PICO-8 pixel art that you can use in your games! It is easy to copy from here and paste it directly into your PICO-8 sprite sheet.
Discord Chat
Join us on Discord to really be a part of the community. Get help, share your creations, team up with others, play games, and much more! We are building a community of nerds who love to learn new skills and hobbies in PICO-8 and beyond.