If you’ve ever heard of the commercial application PICO-8, a “fantasy game console” as it is called by its developer, TIC-80 is just like it (and I really mean that, the interface is identical) but comes with many added features and is completely free and open source.

Both PICO-8 and TIC-80 are applications that let you create and play games and they come with everything you need included in the Windows/Linux/macOS app. TIC-80 can even be used right on its website without downloading anything, to try it out before installing. They both come with a code editor, a pixel graphics sprite editor, a tile map editor, a sound editor and a music editor. The resulting games can be output in different formats, including HTML5 so you can distribute your games for the web, playable right inside the browser.

What is novel about these apps is that they artificially limit the quality of the games, there are only 16 colors you can use, the display is tiny and so on. It’s like programming a console or computer in the 80s! I personally find that much easier to get started with, you don’t need to write huge games since you can’t, you don’t need to be a talented graphics artist because the graphics are so limited anyhow. You can just concentrate on making the game you always wanted to make, but not spend years on doing that in the quality of today’s indie games.

But it’s not just for learning game programming, if you already know how to do it you might still find it super fun to work within the limitations. If you’re really good, you can even get a 3D game going!

PICO-8 Vs. TIC-80

Why is TIC-80 called a fantasy computer and not fantasy console like PICO-8? Because some of the limitations of the games you can create were a bit loosened. Where PICO-8 only supports a display with 128x128 pixels, TIC-80 has a display with 240x130 pixels for example, allows you to create 256 instead of 128 sprites, has a bigger map and doubles the size of the game cartridges of PICO-8 (32kb) to 64kb, so your programs can be twice as long.

One of the most interesting additions in TIC-80 compared to Pico is that it supports multiple programming languages. While PICO-8 only supports Lua, TIC-80 supports Lua, MoonScript and, most interestingly to me since I use it daily, JavaScript!

TIC-80 comes also with mouse support, in addition to the keybord and gamepad support of PICO-8, so you can create mouse controlled games with it, which even makes it suitable for developing old school applications like this paint app.

TIC-80 User Interface

Code editor:

Sprite editor:

Tile map editor:

Sound FX editor:

Music editor:

TIC-80 also can access the TIC-80 website which has many demos, tools and games that you can play and even look at the code to learn how they were made, which can all be accessed from within the app using the surf command in an easy to use menu:

Some of the games created with TIC-80

fps80:

tictris:

snake:

How to learn to program games with this?

You won't get a nice in-game tutorial, you'll have to read the documentation, look at the samples and games others have made and figure it out yourself, just like kids did back in the 80s. It's not as hard as it sounds, but it does mean you need some patience and perseverance. The reason why I think this is great for learning game programming is because the limitations mean it is a lot simpler and it comes with all the tools you need in one tiny executable.

That being said, you can find tons of video tutorials on YouTube and text tutorials on Google for Pico-8 and TIC-80, just search for example: "TIC-80 tutorial" on YouTube. So if you do need some help to get started, you should have no trouble finding it.

Where to get it?

TIC-80 website - FREE
PICO-8 website - $14,99