Retro Game Making, and Custom TCGs

Hey there,

I just got back from a half-term holiday with my family, feeling refreshed and full of ideas. I brought my laptop along but only used it a couple of times for Brush Ninja customer support. Otherwise, I stayed away from screens; except for playing Pokémon Go with my son and jotting down ideas for Brush Ninja and my other projects.

Luckily, I had most of this newsletter prepped before we left, so getting this issue out hasn’t needed too much work.

Hope you’ve had a great couple of weeks and are feeling suitably creative!

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Pico-8

Looking back, I probably should have covered Pico-8 last issue, since PicoCAD was built with it. But I didn’t—so let’s fix that now.

Pico-8 is a fantasy console for making, sharing, and playing tiny games and creative programs. It’s a fantastic way to dive into game development, offering a fun, approachable experience.

It uses Lua, a lightweight scripting language that’s easy to pick up. Lua is popular in hobbyist game development, so if you start with Pico-8 and later want to build more advanced games, the transition will be smoother.

Pico-8 comes with built-in tools, including a code editor, sprite editor, map editor, sound editor, and music editor. This all-in-one setup makes it an excellent choice for both beginners and experienced developers looking to experiment.

One of Pico-8’s biggest strengths is its community, a thriving hub of creators sharing ideas, collaborating, and making cool stuff together.

Lexaloffle and the Pico-8 Ecosystem

Pico-8 was created by Lexaloffle, an indie developer I’ve followed since the early 2000s. His puzzle game Zen Puzzle Garden was a personal favorite. These days, he makes a living from Pico-8 and other creative software.

His other projects include:

• Voxatron – A voxel-based 3D game maker.
• Picotron – A fantasy operating system (think a tiny, custom OS with built-in apps and game development tools).

Like Pico-8, Picotron lets you create your own apps and games, complete with its own set of built-in editors.

Playing Pico-8 Games

If you’re more interested in playing than creating, the Pico-8 website has a massive collection of community-made games to explore.

Pico-8 has even been used for commercial games and tools. Despite its small resolution and strict limitations, some developers have found ways to turn it into a source of income. That said, making money shouldn’t be the goal—it’s just nice to know it’s possible.

One of my favorite Pico-8 developers is Johan Peitz, the creator of PicoCAD. He has an entire series of excellent Pico-8 games, which you can find on his itch.io page.

Speaking of itch.io, there are loads of Pico-8 games on there too—many of them demakes (simplified remakes of existing games). You can browse them using the Pico-8 tag.

Try Pico-8 →

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Every TCG I’ve Ever Made… (2000+ Cards)

To clarify, this is not my video. It’s from a YouTuber named ChaosGalaxyTCG, who has created over 2000 custom cards for various custom trading card games (TCGs).

I’ve mentioned before how I have a long list of projects I’d love to make, and a trading card game (TCG) is another one to add to the pile. I’ve sketched out a few ideas, but nothing that feels quite fun enough—yet.

That brings me to this video, which dives into the many custom TCGs created by ChaosGalaxyTCG. He started designing games at just eight years old, beginning with simple “highest number wins” mechanics and gradually evolving into complex systems with multiple card types and abilities. It’s fascinating to see how his ideas developed over time, and I love the dedication—sticking with something for so long and constantly improving it.

The rest of his channel is packed with content on custom TCGs, including deck-building, game mechanics, and card design. It might seem like a niche interest, but with 44K subscribers, it’s clear that a lot of people are into this kind of thing. Definitely worth checking out!

Watch the video ▶️

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Sparked Discoveries

Here’s a handful of links I found intriguing this week:

How to Paint Like Hayao Miyazaki

Hayao Miyazaki is a legendary animator and filmmaker, known primarily for his work at Studio Ghibli, the animation studio responsible for classics like Spirited Away, My Neighbor Totoro, and Princess Mononoke. Miyazaki is also known for his beautiful and detailed hand-painted backgrounds. This article looks at a set of notes he made for an art set sold at the Ghibli museum. The notes are beautiful little watercolor paintings with tips on how best to use the tools - and this article translates them into English for us to learn from.

Pocket Platformer has added moving platforms

I mentioned this all the way back in issue 1 (3 issues ago), but Pocket Platformer is a fun game making tool that runs in your web browser. The developer is constantly adding new features. Last week they added moving platforms, which will add a lot of new level design possibilities.

Pokémon day 2025

If you like Pokémon then you may know about Pokemon day - the anniversary of the original release of Pokémon Red and Green in Japan. This is the yearly celebration of the game (that is soon turning 30), and the day the company often announces new games, movies and features.

HTML For People

This has been around for a few years but it’s a really nice introduction to creating and editing simple websites. This is possibly a simpler introduction to programming than other languages. It gets you used to the idea of writing code and seeing the results, and you end up with a website at the end of it.