Controls: #Permalink to this heading

• O Button (shoot): Z
• X Button: X
• Movement: Arrow keys

This is a shmup I made for The Worst Game Jam 4 in early 2026. It's built in PICO-8, a fantasy console made by Lexaloffle Games. I made this game in about a week and had an absolute blast doing it. I highly recommend picking PICO-8 up to make a game. Lost stars is also open source by design, so if you'd like to look at how the game works, open it up in PICO-8 and look at the code editor! Everything should be reasonably readible, but I don't have the best habits when it comes to writing comments. If you are interested in using the game as a learning resource and want me to explain anything to you, please let me know! I wrote the game in an external editor and later compiled it into a single .p8 file. IF you open the file in any text editor and tell your editor to use Lua syntax highlighting, it should be pretty easy to read.

I am not asking for people to pay for this game, but if you happen to be interested in supporting development of future titles, you can purchase the game via Itch.io. If you want an offline copy of the game, you can download it for free from Itch or the Lexaloffle BBS.

Thank you to Gruber for his song "Dimensional Gate" from PICO-8 Tunes Vol. 2 and Robby Dunguay for his song "Out of Control" from Nine Songs in PICO-8. Additional thanks to Pancelor for their excellent debugging function, which can be found in their PICO-8 debugging tutorial.

Version History #Permalink to this heading

• 1.0.2 - Fixed a minor graphical bug in the Game Over screen when completing the third level.
• 1.0.1 - Fixed an issue where bosses wouldn't spawn at the end of levels.