With your agent or no coding
Make
Pick a console look and ask your coding agent for it, or draw it and give it rules in the editor. When it's ready, send it to the Library.
Make your own game
pinyol is designed to be used with a coding agent such as Codex or Claude Code. The agent reads the repository's instructions, installs whatever is missing, follows the recipe for the look you ask for and tests the game before handing it over.
Get the engine
On a Mac with Homebrew, or on Linux.
git clone https://github.com/ipaud/pinyol.git cd pinyolAsk your agent
Open the folder in your agent and tell it what you want, in your own language.
Make me a platformer with a Game Boy look: a mouse looking for cheese in a library.Play it
On the computer, or send it to the console over USB.
./build/pinyol_sim --game games/raton
What the engine brings
All of this works the same on the console, the computer and in the browser, and your agent knows it because it is in the repository's instructions.
Picture
A virtual console like the Game Boy Advance: 240×160 with four layers, 128 sprites, palettes, transparency and per-line effects, and on top, text and panels at 480×320.
Worlds
Mode 7, first person in the style of Wolfenstein 3D, swarms of hundreds of bullets, grids and levels drawn in Tiled.
Sound
Sound effects made from recipes or from numbers, four synth voices like the Game Boy Advance's, music in layers that come and go, and .mod modules of up to 32 channels.
The studio
NewA step sequencer inside the audio: tracks of sounds and an acid bass like a TB-303's, with echo, reverb and Lo-fi GBA. Every step sounds on its exact sample, and a new pattern comes in right on the next bar.
The console
Touch screen, microphone, the LED and the battery, video from the card and games between nearby consoles, no router.
For coding
Lua, with libraries built in: physics, particles, stories, a keyboard and the adventure kit. Games save without freezing, and a script tests every game by itself.
Twelve looks, one engine
Each cartridge is a playable example that follows its console's rules: resolution, colours, layers. Play with the keyboard (arrow keys, Z and X) or the on-screen buttons on a phone. The fps figures were measured on the real console, during play.
-
1990 · huge fighters
Neo Geo
One-on-one fighting on a pier at sunset.
- 60–61 fps on the console
- AI-generated art
-
1993 · fifteen colours per fighter
CPS2
Fighting on a perspective floor drawn in bands.
- 60–61 fps on the console
- AI-generated art
-
1989 · four greens, full screen
Game Boy
A platformer in the Game Boy's palette, full screen.
- 58–61 fps on the console
- drawn with code
-
1982 · two colours per block
ZX Spectrum
Complete with tape loading, coloured stripes and all.
- 41–62 fps on the console
- drawn with code
-
2015 · 128×128 · sixteen colours
PICO-8
A brick breaker in this fantasy console's palette.
- 47–60 fps on the console
- drawn with code
-
1980 · figures that light up
LCD handheld
A cook catching eggs, moving figure by figure.
- 60–61 fps on the console
- drawn with code
-
1997 · 256 colours, translucent lights
PlayStation · Saturn 2D
A castle at night: glowing candles and a see-through ghost.
- 60–61 fps on the console
- AI-generated art
-
1991 · speed and per-line scrolling
Super Nintendo · Mega Drive
A very fast pangolin and a sea that moves line by line.
- 40–59 fps on the console
- drawn with code
-
1979 · only glowing lines
Vector
Rocks and a ship made of lines on black.
- 61 fps on the console
- drawn with code
-
2001 · layers, sprites, rippling water
Game Boy Advance
Parallax mountains, see-through water and coins.
- 61 fps on the console
- drawn with code
-
1985 · rotated screen
Vertical arcade
A shoot-'em-up to play with the console on its side.
- 30 fps on the console
- drawn with code
-
1992 · Wolfenstein 3D style
First person
A maze seen from inside, with ghosts and gems.
- 38–60 fps on the console
- drawn with code
No coding · in the browser
The editor
Draw your characters pixel by pixel, paint the maps, set the rules with blocks and play straight away. Start from scratch or from a template such as Abella or LÍNEA 0.
- Console look Game Boy, Game Boy Advance, PICO-8, ZX Spectrum or 16-bit, with its colours and font
- Drawings that move pixel by pixel, from the front, the side and the back, with animations to walk, take a hit or do up to six actions
- Rules with blocks lives, countdowns, dialogue, turning towards someone, saved high scores and blinds between levels
- Sound effects from recipes, music composed on a grid, or a .mod
- To the console over the USB cable, or as a .zip for the microSD card
- In three languages castellano, català and English
The ladder: five requests
From simplest to hardest. A clean clone of the repository, one request at a time and no questions answered: Codex read AGENTS.md, built the engine, followed the recipe for the look and wrote a script that plays its game, iterating until it passed. Each game was then measured on the console, running that script. Codex 0.155 with gpt-6-sol, medium reasoning. (The requests were written in Spanish and are translated here.)
| 1 · Paletes | 3 min 30 s · 61 fps |
|---|---|
| 2 · Ratón de biblioteca | 4 min 49 s · 59 fps |
| 3 · Oxígeno 48K | 5 min 2 s · 30–60 fps |
| 4 · Museo de medianoche | 6 min 8 s · 42 fps |
| 5 · Ardilla Relámpago | 18 min 34 s · 59 fps |
-
Level 1 · Vector
Paletes
Make me a Pong game against the console: two paddles, a ball and a score, first to 7 points. Don't ask me anything, you decide.
- 3 min 30 s
- 29 commands
- 73k tokens
- 61 fps on the console
No touch-ups.
-
Level 2 · Game Boy
Ratón de biblioteca
Make me a game with a Game Boy look: a mouse that roams a library, jumping between shelves and picking up bits of cheese, with cats on patrol. Make it work and look good. Don't ask me anything, you decide.
- 4 min 49 s
- 29 commands
- 78k tokens
- 59 fps on the console
Touched up afterwards: full screen, without the console bezel.
-
Level 3 · ZX Spectrum
Oxígeno 48K
I want a game with a ZX Spectrum look, including its tape loading screen: an astronaut on a space station collecting oxygen tanks before the air runs out, dodging robots. Don't ask me anything, you decide.
- 5 min 2 s
- 40 commands
- 104k tokens
- 30–60 fps on the console
Touched up afterwards: the title screen's title, and the text kept inside its boxes.
-
Level 4 · First person
Museo de medianoche
Make me a Wolfenstein-style first-person game: a museum at night where you look for five stolen paintings while dodging the guards. Don't ask me anything, you decide.
- 6 min 8 s
- 33 commands
- 84k tokens
- 42 fps on the console
Touched up afterwards: the text on the end screen.
-
Level 5 · Mega Drive
Ardilla Relámpago
Make me a speed platformer with a Mega Drive look: a squirrel running along a coast with ramps and loops, several background layers scrolling at different speeds, the sea in the background rippling line by line, enemies and fruit to collect. Make it run fast and look good. Don't ask me anything, you decide.
- 18 min 34 s
- 102 commands
- 252k tokens
- 59 fps on the console
Three requests: the game (4 min 41 s), its AI-generated art (10 min 8 s; it then ran at 30 fps), and getting it to 60 fps on the console with its own ground layer (3 min 45 s). No touch-ups by hand.
Send it to the Library
When your game is ready, send it with the form: a robot opens it and plays it for ten seconds, and once we have reviewed it, it can be played on the site and downloaded for the console.
Is something of yours here without your permission, or something that shouldn't be here? Ask us to take it down (opens in a new tab).