TL;DR:
PICO-8 is amazing!
Ludum Dare Link
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What a rush! I needed all those 72 hours to complete this. At about 40 minutes from the end, I had the game completed and for god's sake, it worked and was ready.
It has been a lot since my last solo Ludum Dare (like 4 years probably) but I'm so happy that this is the game for my comeback. This time the theme was 'Stuck in a loop', and the Ludum Dare 47 started a bit earlier, at midnight for me. I thought about this concept just a few hours after I went to bed, and I've fallen in love with it. I believe this truly resonates with how I feel and have felt and this is why I think I've managed to make it conveys those feelings to the player.​
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I decided one month ago that I would have used PICO-8 for this jam, and I'm glad that I've chosen it because I had so much fun with it! The editor is so lovely and very well packed.
I did all my work with it (except using notepad to reorder PICO-8 code tab) and I think that it helped to keep me focused, not having to switch to different programs and stuff.
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PICO-8 also has a few limits to make the game feel like a true retro one, like palette color, sprite sheet, sound, and most of all (for me at least) code.
The last day, at about 12 hours from the end and the game ALMOST completed, I reached PICO-8 tokens limit (a token is more or less a code word), so I couldn't write any more code! I totally panicked and had to refactor all my beloved copy-paste code.
Three hours later, I had the same game but with more or less another 1000 free tokens, the rest of the day was pure anxiety since I had to be sure I didn't reach the limit again, which I reached a few times nonetheless, needing to strip away debug code and some other refactor.
That said, PICO-8 limits are what makes it so satisfying and charming. They helped me focus on the important things and without them I wouldn't have made this game as it is.
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This time, thank again to