PICO-8

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.

Player Movement Reference

In May, we reached a Ko-Fi goal to produce a huge reference for the many different types of player movements, organized by development complexity and includes over 120 PICO-8 games as examples.

Ongoing Giveaway Event

Thanks to our Ko-Fi Supporters, we are happily gifting more PICO-8 licenses to anyone who earn it through your dedication and creativity. We are also extending offers to sponsor teachers, schools, and coding clubs who want to use PICO-8. Click the Gift button to find out more. We have given over 50 licenses so far!

Nerdy Teachers Family

In July '25, we are happy to announce that we welcomed a NerdyBaby into the world! Apologies for the slow down of content creation but this is the reason and we hope to return soon once we get the free time.

Custom Color Palette Studio

In June '25, we built an all-in-one webpage to make choosing, analyzing, arranging, and exporting a custom PICO-8 palette really easy!

Collision Tutorials

In May '25, we released a set of 8 collision tutorials with interactive demos, detailed explanations of code, and example uses.

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.

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.

Game Design

Here are design focused references inlcuding all the ways you can build player movement in 2D games, how to teach players how to play your game, 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.

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.