PICO-BALL

A PICO-8 sports game starring Jelpi!

Play solo or together in a mashup of tennis, volleyball, squash, and wallball where the only rule is: two bounces on one side is a point for the other.

Controls:

The controls should all be in the game, but for those who aren't familiar with PICO-8: ESDF is used for player 2 instead of WASD so it works on many international keyboards as well as QWERTY.

I recommend that those playing with controller or you PICO-8 veterans go to 'game settings' from the pause menu to make the controls work better for controllers and z/x keys. The game is playable with just arrow keys for each player, but it may make things a little harder for some if the settings aren't changed.

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Gamemodes 🎮

--Solo

    -Campaign🏆Help Jelpi ascend the ranks and meet an old comrade...

    -Wall🧱Play a solo match against the wall (The Unbeatable Opponent) to see how long you last (powerups come in handy here)

    -Spectate👁️Watch opponents previously defeated in campaign play against each other (could be together...)

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--Together

    -Versus👊💥Face each other in a PICO-BALL match, powerups add a lot of depth, craziness and sillyness

    -Co-op🤝💖 Work together to keep the ball(s) in the air (the powerups both aid and hinder your juggling ability)

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Campaign Opponents 💥🏆

    -Strider🚶‍➡️Newcomer to the game, has a hard time getting shots that go way over their head

    -Heli🚁There isn't a rule against flying, but luckily this helicoper-creature isn't too good at catching up to a quick-moving ball

    -Frog🎩🐸A dapper frog that uses his tongue for some crazy trick shots (which work about half of the time)

    -Bird🐦This opponent is actually good at flying and is not afraid to come over to your side, so well-placed aggressive shots are the way to go here

    -Mimo🐰Jelpi's old friend and comrade with the same moves, gets more aggressive as the game goes on, which can be taken advantage of...

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Wear hats that you've unlocked by defeating opponents!

 

Well,  Have fun!

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Credits

Game (Code/Music/Sound/Story/Art) by PlayerTheMaker (itch.io), a.k.a. @Munchkin (Lexaloffle BBS)

Original Jelpi characters/themes/sound-effects/art and PICO-8 itself, @zep/Lexaloffle
  

  

version history

By the way, the current version is visible in the in-game credits, it's currently 1.0.1.

The numbers go, gameNumber.featureUpdate.patchNumber.

It's quite likely that I'll have to fix a bug, and I might add some extra hats in the future (I didn't have time to rework the code to allow extra hats from co-op and wall high scores if I wanted to get the game out in July) so the latter two numbers may change, but I don't plan to make a sequel, so the first one probably never will!

• 1.0.0: original release, 7/29/2025
• 1.0.1: patch, 7/30/2025; tweaked strider speed range, slowed the bird slightly to make the match a little easier, fixed the "rewatch intro" pause menu option from replaying the intro incorrectly when chosen while in a submenu, fixed the control text centering on the co-op and versus submenus, allowed spectate to let you see matches with the next opponent you have to beat in the campaign
• 1.1.2: feature+patch, 7/31/2025; reduced bird force slowed the bird slightly to make the match a little easier, fixed hollow particles showing up as filled in cutscenes, fixed bug where replaying an opponent would reset your save data to as if you had just beaten them for the first time, added ability to see your best match scores against each opponent, added a star on the campaign and home screen if you've beaten the game (or gotten the secret hat), added a secret hat for completionists!
  
• 1.1.3: patch, 8/5/2025; fixed crash that occurs when completing matches with a double-digit score, fixed unnecessary double loading on menu when winning a campaign match, made transition peephole cover the winner card when a new match is quickly chosen

    

Dev notes can be found on this games Lexaloffle page (this version also works better on mobile for some):  https://www.lexaloffle.com/bbs/?pid=171244#p