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Show HN: Pyxel – A Python retro game engine with built-in art and sound editors

14 points kitao 19 hours ago 4 comments

Hi HN, I'm the creator of Pyxel, a free, MIT-licensed retro game engine for Python. I've been developing it since 2018, and it recently passed 18,000 stars on GitHub.

Pyxel includes pixel art, tilemap, sound, and music editors, so you can create a game's visuals and audio as well as write its code in Python. The engine itself is implemented in Rust.

Games run on Windows, macOS, Linux, and the web, as well as supported Linux-based retro handhelds.

You can share a URL to launch a Pyxel game hosted on GitHub directly in a browser. You can also create games entirely in your browser with Pyxel Code Maker, or write chiptunes in Pyxel MML Studio.

See what people have made with Pyxel: https://kitao.github.io/pyxel-user-examples/

Try Code Maker: https://kitao.github.io/pyxel/web/code-maker/

I'm happy to answer questions about the engine and its implementation.

krapp 18 hours ago | parent

It looks cool. I have two questions.

1) What's your AI policy?

2) How is this different from PyGame?

kitao 15 hours ago | parent

On AI, I have two goals. First, I want Pyxel's simple API to make programming and game creation enjoyable for people writing code themselves, without AI.

On the other hand, I also think its simple, focused design makes it a useful library for AI-assisted development, including vibe coding. I've published Pyxel MCP (https://github.com/kitao/pyxel-mcp) and Pyxel Skill (https://github.com/kitao/pyxel-skill) to support that use.

Compared with Pygame, which is more general-purpose, Pyxel deliberately narrows its scope and specifications. It also includes pixel art, tilemap, sound, and music editors. The focus is on helping beginners start making games without having to make lots of decisions about tools and low-level details. Those retro, old-school constraints also appeal to experienced game developers.

jhbadger 17 minutes ago | parent

To follow up on kitao's response, with its editor system allowing you to interactively edit sprites and sounds, pyxel is more like a "fantasy console" like PICO-8 and TIC-80 if you are familar with those.

gregkb 7 hours ago | parent

had such a great time with Pyxel! was great fun to recreate some of the demo scene effects from my childhood. easy to setup and get coding and make some pixels "move" quickly. it has some inherit limitations (eg. how colours and bitmaps are organised) which gives you some satisfying challenges. just enough to satisfy your 8-16bits assembly nostalgia. maybe I should go back add a few more parts to my demo: https://github.com/greg76/megademo