A complete engine
Sprites, tilemaps, collisions, a camera, sound, and text are built in — the parts every game needs, ready to use.
picogame
Make little games for tiny handhelds in Python. Try them in your browser or on your PC, then play on a supported 
board.
board.What is picogame?
Section titled “What is picogame?”picogame is a small 2D game engine for microcontrollers like the RP2040, the chip inside the PicoPad pocket console. You write your game in Python and try it in your browser or the desktop simulator. When it is ready, copy it to a supported board. You do not need C, a firmware build, or hardware to start.
See it in action
Section titled “See it in action”A whole game, designed and built with picogame:
What picogame gives you
Section titled “What picogame gives you”Start in your browser in five minutes, then run the same code on the device — picogame handles the rest:
Smooth motion at 30+ FPS
The engine repaints only what changed each frame, so games stay fluid — even on the modest RP2040.
The low-level work is done
The hard parts — display driver, blitter, text, collisions — run in native C. You write your game in plain Python.
Built for small RAM
Built to use as little memory as it can — full-screen effects need no extra buffer, so even big scenes fit the RP2040’s small RAM.
What can you build?
Section titled “What can you build?”Games across several genres, runnable in your browser and on supported devices:
Sprites, scrolling tilemaps, a moving camera, particles, sound, and saved high scores. See all the games — and play them in your browser →
Try it now, right in your browser
Section titled “Try it now, right in your browser”Get it on your device
Section titled “Get it on your device”Two steps and you’re playing: flash the firmware, then copy a ready-made pack of games onto the drive. A launcher boots so you can pick a game and play — no coding needed.
⬇ 1. Download firmwarePick the .uf2 for your board (PicoPad, Fruit Jam, PicoSystem, plain Pico, ...) and drag it onto the BOOTSEL drive.
⬇ 2. Get the games packChoose the pack for your board — RP2040, RP2350, or Fruit Jam — extract onto CIRCUITPY, and a game menu boots.
Pick your path
Section titled “Pick your path”🌱 New to making gamesStart from zero. Get something moving in five minutes, no hardware needed, then build up step by step.
🔁 Made games beforeComing from Pygame or PICO-8? The concept map translates what you already know into picogame's names, then points you to the reference.
🧰 Know CircuitPythonFluent in displayio, or have a screen-based project to bring over? The displayio bridge takes you from screens to games.
🛠️ Already building with picogameStraight to the API cheat sheet, the feature guide, and how to do things efficiently (RAM, framerate, deploy).
🤖 Building with an AI agentGive your coding agent the game-design skill or point it at /llms.txt — it'll design and build picogame games with the right patterns.
New to game words like sprite or tilemap? Start with the Glossary.
Where the code lives
Section titled “Where the code lives”Clone the main repository for the simulator, games, tutorials, and helper libraries.
👾 picogame →The main repo: the desktop simulator, ready-to-play games, step-by-step tutorials, and the picogame_* helper libraries.
The other repositories serve specific deployment and compatibility needs:
📚 picogame-libsThe helper libraries on their own, when you want them à la carte or to follow their releases.
🐍 circuitpython (fork)The firmware source, only to build a .uf2 for your own board (the PicoPad's is prebuilt).
🕹️ picogame-stageA Stage compat layer for running existing stage / ugame games on picogame.