Pico Dragon

Take flight on a tiny screen

Seven episodes. One final challenge.

Battle your way through seven episodes, facing different environments and increasingly formidable enemies. Survive long enough to reach the final confrontation at the Tower.

Features

• Custom polygonal 3D graphics designed for the PicoSystem's small display.
• Dragon customization with Attack, Defence, and Agility specializations.
• Distinct dragon appearances that reflect your chosen build.
• Seven episodes, progressing from lake ruins and desert terrain to a final tower encounter.
• Enemy encounters and boss battles with escalating difficulty.
• Persistent continue data that preserves your dragon's selected attributes.
• Performance-focused rendering, including work split across the RP2040's two CPU cores.
• Homebrew hardware development using the PicoSystem SDK.

Controls

PicoSystem input	Action
D-pad	Move and aim
A	Lock on to enemies / fire lock-on lasers
B	Fire gun
X	Pause or resume
Y	Toggle music while paused

Built for PicoSystem

This project is being developed for the Pimoroni PicoSystem, a compact handheld powered by the Raspberry Pi RP2040.

One of the central challenges is rendering a 3D world on hardware with extremely limited resources. Rather than relying on a conventional 3D graphics pipeline, the game uses custom polygon meshes, projection, lighting, and software rendering techniques.

The renderer is also being optimized to take advantage of the RP2040's dual-core processor. The goal is to make the most of the hardware while preserving the look and feel of a low-resolution 3D adventure.