Pocket Platoon

A PICO-8 party game for up to 4 buddies

Test your skills in this fast-paced post-apocalyptic shooter against the invading techno squids, or your buddies!

This game features:

• Local multiplayer for up to 4 players
• 3 game modes: PvE, PvP and PvPvE
• Infinite random generated maps, 3 different planes: Earth, Void and Ruins
• Pixel perfect terrain destruction
• 2 power-ups: Med Kit and Weapon Box
• 2 traps: Land Mine and Acid Barrel
• 10 unique weapons
• melee combat
• techno squids

Controls

The PICO-8 controller has 6 buttons: Left, Right, Up, Down, O and X

• Player1 and Player2 can share a keyboard
• Player1 - Player4 can use any SDL compatible gamepad / controller with at least 6 buttons
• Thanks to PICO-8's web-player Player1 can use touch controls both in vertical ( GameBoy ), and horizontal ( GameGear ) view

Move horizontally with Left and Right

Use your jetpack with O

Aim in 8 directions, shoot with X

If the end of your weapon is inside a wall, X performs a wall-punch

If you, or the end of your weapon is touching another object, X performs a melee attack

Objects

Med Kit  

Every soldier has 10 HP by default. You can only pick up a Med Kit when your HP is below 10. Picking up a Med Kit will restore your HP to 10.

Weapon Box  

You get a Pistol by default. Picking up a Weapon Box will change your weapon to a random weapon which is not a Pistol, and not the one you are currently carrying.

Land Mine   

Stepping on a Land Mine will activate it

Acid Barrel   

Watch out for Acid Barrels!

Techno Squid  

Vicious machine spirit risen from the radioactive ruins of civilization, hunting for the remains of life to destroy

Main Menu

• Players can join at any stage of the game, by pressing either O or X
• After each battle, all players are disconnected, and needs to re-connect for the next battle
• Once connected, navigate in the menu with Up and Down
• Select menu options with Left and Right
• Submit the menu with O or X

Mode controls the game mode:

• War is the PvE mode - there is no friendly fire
• Arena is the PvP mode - there are no techno squids
• Chaos is the PvPvE mode - everyone is for themselves, and soldier kills scores you 2 points

Time sets the length of the battle in minutes

Boxes controls the amount of Med Kits and Weapon Boxes spawned

Traps controls the amount of Land Mines and Acid Barrels spawned

Bots controls the strength of the invading machine forces

Enter the Wastelands will open the Map Menu

Map Menu

Pressing O or X on any menu option will generate a new map with the current settings

Density controls the air/wall ratio

Shape controls how open the map is

Fabric controls the strength of the map, each plane has 3 color schemes

Terraform will just generate a new map

Enter the Battle will generate a new map if there is none, and start the game

Back to Base will bring us back to the Main Menu

In Game

• Race against time to collect as much points as possible
• Killing a soldier or a techno squid will score you one point
• In  War mode you cannot kill other soldiers
• In Arena mode there are no techno squids
• In Chaos mode a soldier kill scores you 2 points
• If a techno squid, a Land Mine or an Acid Barrel kills you, you lose one point
• You also lose one point if you kill yourself

Arsenal

• Knife can be thrown and stick to the ground, your melee attacks deals 3X damage, when you are carrying a knife
• Rockets will lock on the first available target in sight
• Flames has a chance to burn trough terrain
• Grenades are bouncing off the terrain
• Orber blobs are going trough terrain, dealing additional area damage
• Molter blobs are sticking to the terrain, and detonate over time

Credits

 First of all I would like to thank zep for creating PICO-8, a wonderful tool for making tiny games!

I would also like to thank Gruber Jam for composing the music Space Lizards and making it royalty free! Although this is a really catchy chip-tune, it can get repetitive over some time. You can turn off the music separately from the sound, in the PICO-8 built-in menu. Press Enter or P to open the pop-up menu.

I would like to thank the PICO-8 community (here, on YouTube, on Reddit, on Discord and on the official Lexaloffle BBS forum) for providing learning-materials, tutorials, snippets, tips and tricks.