I found Pico-8 to be an enjoyable entry into finishing a game. I’ve just released my first finished game today using it (https://ferm.itch.io/centauri). The limitations helped me to define a scope and really helped towards the end to determine what a completed game would look like. When I would think to add a new cool feature, I’d remember I was near the token limit and prevent myself from doing that.
I've done games with unreal engine on PS4 and Godot on PC.
I agree with you, PICO-8 is fun and I can knock an original game in a weekend without worrying about any marketing or slogging through content.
PICO-8 and the TIC-80 are both great little platforms that will push your creative juices without getting you bogged down in realistic graphics, hi-q music and assets. It's also a pleasure to do as it's very easy to navigate and comes with all batteries included.
Wow, wish I had seen Matt's writeup! I found Cowgod's guide to be ambiguous in several places (BCD and sprite loading especially) when I documented my emulator https://riv.dev/emulating-a-computer-part-1/
I wrote up a series [0] documenting a CHIP-8 emulator I wrote that I hope explains how to get something like this working from the ground up, albeit for a much simpler system.
I write about programming, mainly around emulation, graphics, and game development. I'll soon be writing about my experiences learning Japanese.
RSS: https://riv.dev/feed.xml