Forlorn Shores

Forlorn Shores is a puzzling adventure about finding clues and items to explore strange places. There’s no combat and only a few timing-based elements, but writing your own notes is strongly recommended.

You can also play this game online on the PICO-8 Forums!

C O N T R O L S

Menus:
Arrows: Change Selection
Z: Confirm
X: Cancel

General Gameplay: 
Arrows: Move
Z (Hold): Inspect
X (Tap): Use Current Item
X (Hold): Change Item

Using Items:
Arrows: Directions
X (Tap): Close or Confirm
X (Hold) Change Item

You can quickly leave many areas from the pause menu, opened with Enter.

A B O U T

After a hiatus of 4+ years following my last full cart release, I've returned with a new PICO-8 game!

Forlorn Shores draws most directly from aspects of TUNIC, FEZ, and Angeline Era, but is also a personal challenge to see how expansive of an authored world I could squeeze into a single cart. It’s something of a spiritual successor to my games FUZ and NULL as well.

The content of this game is entirely human-made - no AI was used.

S P E C I A L   T H A N K S

• zep (and the others who helped) for making the PX9 compression algorithm.
• thisismypassword for making Shrinko8.
• Josiah Winslow, pancelor, and freds72 for help with pruning tokens.
• Josiah Winslow for providing his setvars and tablefy functions.
• Werxzy, freds72, and SwordF for sharing resources on executing strings as code.
• bikibird for sharing resources on token saving with setmetatable and _env.
• The developers of TUNIC, FEZ, and Angeline Era for making inspiring work. Special shoutout to Melos Han-Tani and Marina Kittaka of Analgesic Productions, as playing Angeline Era was what sparked this project to crystallize.
• Everyone who's played the game and given feedback so far!

F A Q

How do you save the game? Forlorn Shores autosaves whenever you leave an area.

Can you tell me what to do for [insert puzzle here]? I won't give any complete answer to this kind of question. You should, however, never need to brute force a solution. Also, please avoid spoiling puzzles in the comments!

This puzzle feels really tedious... STOP! If you ever have this thought, you're likely missing an item or clue! Forlorn Shores is designed to only feel this way when you're trying something before you're ready.

Do any puzzles require audio? Nope!

Are you back for good? In my mind I never really left, just got busy. I expect I'll keep making carts when time and inspiration coincide - PICO-8 does hold a special place for me.

Does Forlorn Shores have any secrets? That depends on your definition. Everything should have a clue of some form.

What is Forlorn Shores Atlas? 

This is an OPTIONAL companion application that serves as a visual walkthrough for Forlorn Shores.
If you're ever totally stumped on what to do next, you can consult it to see where you should go to progress (it will reveal a location but NOT what to do there).