1 January, 2026
Three years ago in 2023, I challenged myself to draw something every single day, using a pico-8 drawing app I made for myself. At the time, I wanted to make/post art more regularly and by giving myself that challenge, I ended up posting a lot of (mostly crappy) art that year! I was surprised that I was able to stick to it for the entire year and complete the challenge successfully! It was an incredibly satisfying achievement, but I was also pretty tired by the end of it and didn't want to do anything like it again for the next two years.
Last year, I was really busy and wasn't able to do as much personal creative work as usual. (I've been busy for the last few years actually, even in 2023... Is this is how life will always be...? Anyway,) I've been craving to make more whatever-I-want-to-make stuff again, so this year I've decided to try taking on another self-imposed daily [thing] challenge.
For this challenge, I'll be stepping it up a bit. This time, my "canvas" will be bigger. Not in resolution, but in terms of what I'll be able to make. I'll be using pico-8 (my beloved) again, but this time... it will be the entire program!
I am going to try to make a new pico-8 cart every single day for the entire year.
It can be anything. Static drawn art, code/generative art, stuff moving around the screen, digital toys... game/mechanic prototypes? Just text printed on the screen? (might be a lot those for busy or lazy days lol). Basically, I want to make whatever I feel like making each day, in any medium pico-8 allows (or is pico-8 itself the medium here? Semantics...)
These carts will be accessible via web browser to people who don't have pico-8. If a cart fits within the restrictions, I'll link to a pico-8-edu.com url with the cart preloaded. Otherwise I'll also be hosting the png for each cart here, and anyone should be able to drag and drop them into the free browser version of pico-8 (linked earlier).
Since this challenge is self imposed, I'm making the rules, and there won't be many. I'll probably be writing a lot of simple carts from scratch, but I'll also be allowing myself to copy code, functions, and assets from previous carts I've made (including before this challenge). I'll also allow myself to reuse and build on top of my previous carts if I want to make more ambitious stuff. I miiight allow myself to use functions others have written, but I want to write as much code as I can by myself and will give credit if I end up using any functions made by others. My main, core goal for this challenge is to have a new cart to share each day.
After the end of each month, I also plan to release a multicart containing every cart I made that month, bundled into a tidy package. (What a nice coincidence that a pico-8 update last year increased the multicart export limit from 16 to 32 carts! The exact amount to fit 31 daily carts + the launcher cart!) I'm planning to host the multicarts here on my website, but I might put them on itch.io as well if they're compelling enough. I'll think about it later.
I'll probably still be very busy with work this year, if not more so, so this could be a really bad idea... but I figured doing another daily challenge would be a good way to push myself to do more personal creative work without feeling guilty about it. It's not procrastination if I HAVE to make something each day, right? (even though it's a self-imposed thing...)
I ended up writing a lot here... Right now it's all just plans, "I'll try"s and "probably"s. It will be very embarrassing for me if this was all talk and no show. Let's see if I'm actually able to complete another year long challenge, I hope I can pull this off again.