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+1 on this. Even as an adult I found other game authoring systems too complex to jump into and feel comfortable with (as a hobbyist). Pico-8 was the fastest, easiest "I'm thinking of something" to "I'm seeing something happen on screen" iterative development cycle and a joy to use. Plus, a great community of people willing to help on lexaloffle.com and especially Discord. Some great YouTube tutorials out there as well.

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I learned to code games in QuickBASIC, and pico 8 to me is the closest experience I ever had to that. The tools for putting something on the screen are immediately available with no infrastructure work required. You don't need to create a window, load files, choose a screen mode or anything. You just draw a sprite in the sprite editor and call `spr`

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