Developing an actual game on PICO-8 is like solving a Zachtronics puzzle. Appealing to a small subset of developers who enjoy hex editing, hacking, and squeezing performance out of a limited system.
But if you're more artistically inclined, you will only find frustration where PICO-8 flaunts its "cozyness". It imposes completely arbitrary and unnecessary restrictions where there should be none. These restrictions will become a brick wall you eventually hit, and then you have to start peeking and poking raw memory with hexadecimals like you're programming in fucking C, or just give up trying to make the game you wanted to make.
I realize that this might not be for you, and that is fine. I must object to the “arbitrary and unnecessary” part. You might not agree with the reasons, but there are reasons for the restrictions.
I also want to say that I think of myself as actually very artistically inclined. An 128x128 screen in 16 colors is just a medium. You prefer other mediums and that’s fine, but the implication of “Pico-8 isn’t for artistic people” is simply not true.
You're talking about surface level details and artistic choises. I'm talking about the underlying workings of the engine, and the strangling limits placed thereupon. Limits like token count, which only serves to force you to "optimize" your code somewhere along development of your game because you suddenly "run out of words" to code a new feature you just thought of. Then the framework turns from "helps you make games quickly" to "grinds your progress to a halt because REASONS". Or if you wanted to make another level, the creative artist you are, but there's just not enough room in the map editor, so now you have to plug in a data compression library and lose access to the built-in map editor!
But if you're more artistically inclined, you will only find frustration where PICO-8 flaunts its "cozyness". It imposes completely arbitrary and unnecessary restrictions where there should be none. These restrictions will become a brick wall you eventually hit, and then you have to start peeking and poking raw memory with hexadecimals like you're programming in fucking C, or just give up trying to make the game you wanted to make.