Using PICO-8

This section of the tutorial largely comes from Dylan Bennett's excellent Game Development with PICO-8.

When you first run PICO-8, you start in a mode where you can type in commands. From this mode you can type commands like save, load, and run. You can use the command help to see what other commands you can run from this mode.

Use the ESC key to switch back and forth between editor mode and command mode. When you are playing a game and hit ESC, you'll come back to command mode. Just hit ESC again to go into editor mode.

You'll find notes about each editor and shortcuts relevant to each on the following pages. The shortcuts below are possible no matter which editor you are currently using.

Shortcuts:

• Alt-Right/Left - Next/previous editor
• Ctrl-S - Save
• Ctrl-R - Run
• Ctrl-M - Mute/Unmute
• Alt-Enter - Fullscreen
• Alt-F4, Ctrl-Q - Quit

(Use Cmd instead of Ctrl on macOS.)