Follow me? See if you can keep up with this sequencing game of colors and sound. How much memory can you store? This game was made for the PICO1K Game Jam, where the goal is to create a PICO-8 game in under 1KB of compressed memory.

Lua PICO-8

For the 2023 PICO1K Game Jam, I decided to pay homage to the classic Simon electronic game - with a twist. A fifth square is added to the center of my game where an additional key/button is required to match the center color. The game jam requires that all entries must be less than or equal to 1024 (1K) compressed bytes of code. Only code can be used to create the game, tool, art, or interactive experience. Pre-defined PICO-8 data is not allowed, including pre-created sprites, map, sounds, or external files.

Developers had a month to work on their game jam entries. Over the course of five days during the month, I was able to develop this tiny game. I used an amazing PICO-8 compression visualizer tool, PXAVIZ, created by carlc27843. This slick tool let's you visually analyze the code that's easy to compress versus code bytes that are not reused often and can't be compressed. After my final iteration of developing the game, I was able to get my code for Follow Me? down to 971 compressed bytes. I'm sure there's more PICO-8 coding tricks that might compress it even more, but I met my goal for this fun game jam.

-- you follow?
-- by m4ttbit

l={8,12,11,10,9}
bt=true
function clr()
	for z in all(s) do
 	z.show=false
 end
 n=true
end
function snd()
 if en then
  print '\abdf'
  print '\aace'
	else
	 for z in all(s) do
	  if z.show then
	  	u=z.pos
	   if u==1 then
				 print '\ac'
				elseif u==2 then
				 print '\ad'
				elseif u==3 then
				 print '\ae'
				elseif u==4 then
				 print '\af'
				elseif u==5 then
				 print '\ag'
				end
			end
		end
	end
end
function rst()
	i+=1
	cl=1
 n=false
end
function _init()
 s={}
 p={}
 cl=1
 st=7
 t=1
 id=1
 n=true
 en=false
 comp=true
 ad=false
 for i=48,72,12 do
	 z={pos=t,x=i,y=60,a=i+8,b=68,c=7,oc=l[t],show=false}
 	add(s,z)
 	t+=1
 end
	for i=48,72,24 do
 	z={pos=t,x=60,y=i,a=68,b=i+8,c=7,oc=l[t],show=false}
	 add(s,z)
	 t+=1
	end
end
function _update()
 if en then
  pt='game over'
  pr='press x to play again'
  if cl%30==0 then
   clr()
  else
   cl+=1
  end
  if btn(5) then
   _init()
  end
 elseif bt then
  pt='you follow?'
  tr='pico1k game by m4ttbit'
  pr='press x to start'
  if btn(5) then
   bt=false
  end
 else
	 if cl%20==0 and comp and n then
	  pt='my turn'
	  tr='score: '..#p
	  pr=''
	  bt=false
		 if ad and i<=#p then
		  id=p[i]
		  s[id].show=true
		  snd()
		  i+=1
		  cl=1
		  n=false
		 else
			 rn=flr(rnd(5))+1
		 	for z in all(s) do
		  	if z.pos==rn then
		   	z.show=true
		   	snd()
		   	add(p,z.pos)
		   	n=false
		   	i=1
		   	cl=1
		   	comp=false
		  	end
		  end
		 end
		end
		if comp and n==false and cl%10==0 then
		 clr()
		end
		if comp==false and n then
		 pt='your turn'
		 if i>#p then
		  comp=true
		  cl=1
		  i=1
		  ad=true
		 else
		  if cl%100==0 then
		   en=true
		   snd()
		  end
	 		if btnp(0) then
	 		 s[1].show=true
	 			snd()
	 			if p[i]==1 then
			 	 rst()
			 	else
			 	 en=true
			 	 snd()
			 	end
	 		end
	 		if btn(1) then
	 		 s[3].show=true
	 		 snd()
	 			if p[i]==3 then
			 	 rst()
			 	else
			 	 en=true
			 	 snd()
			 	end
	 		end
	 		if btn(2) then
	 		 s[4].show=true
	 		 snd()
	 		 if p[i]==4 then
			 	 rst()
			 	else
			 	 en=true
			 	 snd()
			 	end
	 		end
	 		if btn(3) then
	 		 s[5].show=true
	 		 snd()
	 		 if p[i]==5 then
			 	 rst()
			 	else
			 	 en=true
			 	 snd()
			 	end
	 		end
	 		if btn(4) then
	 		 s[2].show=true
	 		 snd()
	 		 if p[i]==2 then
			 	 rst()
			 	else
			 	 en=true
			 	 snd()
					end
	 		end
	 	end
	 end
	 if comp==false and n==false and cl%10==0 then
	  clr()
	 end
	 cl+=1
	end 
end
function _draw()
	cls()
	for z in all(s) do
	 if z.show then
		 rectfill(z.x,z.y,z.a,z.b,z.oc)
		else
			rectfill(z.x,z.y,z.a,z.b,z.c)
		end
	end
	print(pt,64-#pt*2,32,7)
 print(tr,64-#tr*2,96,7)
 print(pr,64-#pr*2,104,7)
end