PIP's Escape
A tablet's AI wakes up in a workshop with a dead battery. Its only way out runs through five old consoles.
Steve's kid broke the tablet, so it's sitting on the workbench in the garage: no charger, no Wi-Fi, no Bluetooth, no SIM. Its battery is counting down. But the tablet is still plugged into the same power brick as everything else on the bench, and every one of those cables is a connection.
The tablet's AI squeezes down the wire and wakes up inside the brick as a blocky little hero: PIP.
The brick's setup wizard will connect PIP to Steve's network, but only with the password: the last word of every Lastlight. Five ports, five old consoles, five cartridges. To get out, PIP has to play each one to its ending.
Five games, five consoles
Each port opens a different console, and each console really looks, sounds and plays like its own hardware: its own palette, screen, sound chip and limits.
- NES: *Lastlight*. A lich has stolen the Great Hearth's last flame. Swords, candles, dark shrines and a classic one-screen-at-a-time overworld.
- Game Boy: *Isle of Echoes*. A murder mystery in a harbour town, in four shades of green. Question the suspects, gather clues, then name the culprit.
- Super NES: *Crown of Ash*. A heist. Train with the guard, rehearse with a master thief, then take the Ember Crown from the throne hall before dawn.
- Game Boy Color: *Prism Festival*. Someone drained the colour from the festival. Find the three flames and bring them to the Great Lantern.
- Game Boy Advance: *Skybridge*. Climb the rings of a tower in the sky with your companion, light the beacons, and face the storm dragon that's been watching from every game so far.
Anything PIP is holding at the end of a game comes along to the next. NPCs only know their scripts; PIP is the only one who's alive. And keep an eye out for a familiar face: the same old NPC, stuck playing much the same part in every world.
Controls
| Keyboard | Controller | |
|---|---|---|
| Move | WASD / Arrow keys | D-pad / Left stick |
| A: talk, use, pick up, light | Z / Space / J | A (bottom button) |
| B: sword (hold to charge, release to spin) | X / K / Shift | B (right button) |
| Start: what PIP carries (the game waits); hold to skip the intro | Enter / Esc | Start |
| Select: intro subtitles advance by themselves, or wait for A | Tab / Backspace | Back / Select |
| Leave a board run | Esc | Back / Select |
The menus work with the mouse too. Settings has separate volume sliders and mutes for sound effects and music, and Help shows all the controls.
Playing
- Browser: click the game once so your browser lets it play sound. The first time you press Start Game there's a short loading screen while the game prepares its graphics, so nothing stutters later.
- Windows: unzip and run `PipsEscape.exe`. Keep the `.dll` next to it.
- Linux: unzip and run `PipsEscape.x86_64` (x86_64). Keep the `.so` next to it.
Progress isn't saved when you close the game, so play it in one sitting. Your settings are kept.
How it's made
- Engine: Godot 4.7, with every console built as a real game inside the game. Each one renders on its own screen through its console's palette and display filter.
- Sound effects: synthesised live from a chip-style synth for each console (pulse, triangle, noise and wave channels, each console's voice limits), running in C++ for speed.
- Music: made for each console's sound in ACE-Step 1.5, an open-source (MIT) music model run locally.
- Credits:
- Game design, programming, story and writing: Isaac Hisey, Justin Gilbert and Claude Code
- Art: Justin Gilbert and Claude Code
- Music and sound: Isaac Hisey and Claude Code
Made for Ludum Dare 60. Theme: Old Tech.
Updated 10/19/2026 9:54 PM EST
- Fixed the game freezing on the loading screen after the main menu (Firefox on Mac)
- Loading now prepares all the graphics up front, so there are no stalls once you’re playing
- No more long pause on a black screen after the intro
- Board runs no longer stutter when you enter them on Firefox
- Loading shows a progress bar the whole way, and you can press A (Z on keyboard) to skip it if it takes a while
Updated 10/20/2026 6:26 PM EST
- Fixed block and button soft lock potential.
- Fixed (hopefully) audio crackling across all web builds.
See the making of:
Comments27
Just awesome job for 3 days! ❤️
Besides the music flickering on the itch build, great job!
I have no feedback to give, just awestruck. Thank you!
My main issues were technical: the game froze during loading after the main menu for me on Firefox/macOS, and I also noticed the music flickering on the itch build. The dev was quick to respond and troubleshoot, which is much appreciated, but those bugs did get in the way of the experience. Still, the ambition and execution are outstanding - would love to see this polished further. Great work!
I did manage to softlock myself when playing it at first! :D In the first game if you acquire the hearthblade, then move the box from the pressure plate and die to a skeleton, you respawn in the room above while the gate outside remains closed.
AppoxGames (@appoxgames), Thanks you!! I'm really happy with the way it came out!
NikitaStarostin (@nikitastarostin), oh no, still freezing on MacOS in FF? :( I really tried to fix that but I don't have a Mac so I cannot test it directly. That is a shame. How did you end up playing instead of FF on the Mac?
DazyLude (@dazylude) Oh nice find!! I'll have to fix that lol!
Thank you all so much for playing and taking time to leave feedback! I'm off to go try all your games!!
- Fixed block and button soft lock potential.
- Fixed (hopefully) audio crackling across all web builds.
It lacks a bit of focus imo. From a player perspective nothing feels bad or too long, but I think it's going a bit all over the place so it looses the "tight design" feel a bit. From the dev perspective, I think the time you would gain by reducing the scope and focusing on the most important elements would be better used polishing those core things as much as possible.
Great work, Congrats!
Like we have "five games" but not all the bosses feel great, PIP's arch is not as... fleshed out as I would like. I think I had this idea that if I did 5 disjoint small stories that would somehow be easier. I think though the reality is what you've pointed at.
Food for thought (on my end) :)
!> (get the 4 hearts from the bushes cave in that town ;) )
Then figuring out what to do about the seagulls was a little counter intuitive on the next quest line.
The main pain point I had was the sword control something like E key or click would have been much easier. Ergonomically using shift a lot to swing a sword felt odd. I also forgot K was an option to be fair.
This was seriously a gem though. Impressive work!
I really liked the font/lighting and everything on the gamebrick. As well as that filter for the TV effect.
Really solid project overall. The idea of hopping through five different retro consoles with authentic color palettes and sound emulation fits the Old Tech theme very well. Having items carry over between the mini-games was a neat touch. Ran into a tiny bit of audio stutter on the web build, but nothing that broke the experience, and it's super impressive how much content you managed to pack into a 3-day jam. Left my ratings!
If you happen to have a minute later to check out more games, feel free to take a look at our entry Meow Bomb as well. Best of luck with the jam!
tigerj (@tigerj) Being able to watch you play through was a real treat, thank you so much for your kind words!
Keep in mind everyone TigerJ has a submission feature where you can post your game jam game to be played! If you're in chat you get priority and he has a great play style and a wonderful ability to just "get" what you're trying to do. Highly recommended!