#indiedev

Picotron is Lexaloffle’s “fantasy workstation”: a self-contained creative environment for making small games, animations, music, demos, and other experimental software. It comes from Joseph “Zep” White, best known as the creator of PICO-8, and it takes the same design philosophy into a larger, more desktop-like package. If PICO-8 is a tightly constrained virtual console, Picotron is closer to a toy operating system with built-in tools. That matters because the limitations are deliberate: they sh

Pyxel is a free, open-source retro game engine for Python. It exists for people who want the constraints and visual language of fantasy consoles—small screens, limited palettes, simple audio, and a strong bias toward pixel-art games—without leaving the Python ecosystem. The project’s own documentation and repository make that intent explicit: Pyxel’s APIs and palette deliberately reference PICO-8 and TIC-80, but it is implemented as a Python-friendly engine rather than a standalone fantasy conso

TIC-80 is a free, open-source fantasy computer for making, playing, and sharing tiny games. It exists to give hobbyist developers a fixed, deliberately small machine to work within: a modern tool that behaves like a constrained 8-bit-era console, but runs on today’s hardware and in the browser. For newcomers, that combination matters. TIC-80 is not trying to be a general-purpose engine with endless options; it is built around a compact cartridge format, built-in creative tools, and hard limits t