Expressive Systems: Making Poetic Mini-Games in PICO-8
Small, interactive games can function as expressive, personal works of art. Using the retro-inspired creator PICO-8, participants will create a short, vignette-style mini-game to communicate a specific feeling, moment, or idea through metaphorical mechanics and interaction design.
While this intensive introduces core game design concepts and development workflows, the primary focus is on how each design decision carries meaning. From player movement and rules to scoring, sound, and animation, every element shapes how a game is experienced and what a player takes away from it. Working within PICO-8’s built-in constraints, participants will learn how limitations can spark creativity and lead to more focused, expression interactions.
Through a combination of design exercises, iterative design, and playtesting, students will build a complete, playable project from concept to publication. By the end of the course, each participant will have created a small but impactful interactive piece and gained a foundation in game design.
Course Logistics
Enrollment Deadline: June 24, 2026
Dates:
Every Tuesday
July 7 – August 11, 2026
Times:
6 – 9 PM PT
Location: Online
Cost: $750 for Live Online Access.
Scholarship: We also offer Diversity Scholarships.
Apply by June 24, 2026. Scholarship notifications will be sent within 1 week after the deadline.
Experience Level: Beginner – Advanced.
No experience required.
For those with experience, this will be a good game design challenge to prioritize metaphorical interactions within the constraints of PICO-8.
Requirements:
Laptop with PICO-8 installed
Sketchbook (can be digital or physical)
Prerequisites:
- None
- Coding experience is not required is not required, but helpful.
Additional Information:
• No Refunds or Exchanges.
• View our FAQ here.
• Contact [email protected] with any questions.
Educational Goals:
- Participants will walk away with an understanding of the methodologies and pipelines of game development along with a published mini-game that expresses something meaningful to them. Techniques include: interaction design, gameplay programming, level design, sprite animation, sound design, and play-testing.
Course Outline
- Week 1 — July 7: Thinking like a Game Designer
Introducing core game design concepts, systems analysis, and brainstorming methods. By next time, you’ll draft mini-game concepts with an experience goal and interaction flow. - Week 2 — July 14: Intro to Pico 8 and retro video game development
Introducing PICO-8 to bring your mini-game to life. We will start with drawing visuals to the screen and start to animate them with the Code tab. By next time, you’ll design the scene setup for your mini-game. - Week 3 — July 21: Math for Game Mechanics
Adding gameplay to your scene by introducing game development math for common mechanics from retro games. By next time, you’ll make a working prototype of your core interaction. - Week 4 — July 28: Sound design and sequencing
You will learn how to use Pico-8’s dedicated 8-bit style chiptune tracker to create sound effects and background music. This will cover the extreme basics pattern sequencing and how to re-use and re-mix shared snippets from the Pico-8 community. By next time, you’ll have an alpha iteration of your game (with temp art and sound) ready for fellow students to playtest. - Week 5 — August 4: Playtesting and Iterative Design
Learn best practices for playtesting. Synthesize results and implement iterations to your mini-game based on playtest feedback to meet your experience goal.
By next time, you’ll have a polished iteration of your game, with updated art, sound, beginning, and end. - Week 6 — August 11: Sharing your mini-game with the world (and more resources)
Studio time to finish up games before we share and play eachother’s games. We will also go over publishing it to Pico-8’s collection, online, and game design resources to expand moving forward!
About Technologies:
We will be using PICO-8 to create our metaphorical mini games. PICO-8 is a fantasy console for making, sharing and playing tiny games. The limitations of PICO-8 are carefully chosen to be fun to work with, while encouraging small but expressive designs. PICO-8 uses Lua for coding, and includes its own interfaces for making sprites and sounds. Games made with PICO-8 can be published web, and also submitted to PICO-8’s own cartridge explorer, available to all PICO-8 users.
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