Pico-4

Pico-4 is a small 2D platformer that I made. It is heavily inspired by the game Celeste.

This game stars a red square (so creative) who tries to climb a mountain you can control him using the left/right arrow keys to move pressing and z to jump. Later on, you will learn more advanced movement such as that shown in the screen shot below. This shows one of the first levels I made. The original version consisted of 4 levels and one bonus level, the new version has 8 levels, one bonus level and 4 collectables. I’d put time to beat at around two hours for a new player and 20 minutes for a speedrunner, two hours again for an experienced player to get all collectables.

After finishing the first version I had a number of people play through it and found the following information:

  • How easy was it to understand the controls?  Most people took about 3 minutes to figure out the controls so I would say it’s fine.
  • How engaging was the game? Most people spent waayy more time playing this game than it takes to beat, (probably because they kept dying). ((Edit: Sorry if that sounded sarcastic))
  • Was the game too easy, too hard or just right? Varying opinions based on experience with the genre.
  • What changes would you suggest? Aesthetics

After updating this is one of the new levels, (note the ongoing lack of aesthetics):

You can download the game here:

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