This would be a very SaGa (Final Fantasy Legend) inspired RPG made for PICO-8. I started making it while procrastinating Picocross. I've had a hard time putting it down, this game has loads of content. I really pushed the limits on what I could fit into a single PICO-8 cart, so I hope you enjoy it! Be sure to check out the manual if you find anything you don't understand.

I should note, I had to write in a workaround for saving in the web exported version, and the saves may not keep. For the best experience, download the game.

Well, I'm setz. I go by a few names. My twitter is @splixel. If you have a question or comment, that's the best place for it.
I do pixel art, gamedev, speedruns, play fighting games, I used to stream on twitch when I had internet. I work at a junkyard, yell at kids to get off my lawn. Normal human things.
This isn't my first game, but it's probably the one I'm proudest of sharing, at least for the moment.

Basic Controls

Arrow keys for movement
Z and X are the two action keys.
if you get stuck and need to reset, Enter is the pause console button.
Z is generally the OK button, X is the Cancel button.
Pressing the Cancel button in the field also brings up your menu.

Race Differences

There are two races, Espers, and Humans. Easy to tell the difference when I make them female and male.

Espers are all about natural growth and magic. They gain stats after battle, weighted towards HP and INT. Sometimes, they even gain a new ability! When an esper gains an ability, it overwrites whatever was in that slot, but your 4th slot ability never changes. You could have your Destroy replaced by a measly Poke, this is intentional.
As stated, Espers have special abilities, and as such, they have less room to carry items. Espers can only carry 4 items at a time. You'll have to juggle what healing items, armor, and weapons you want to carry more carefully than with a Human.

Humans get to do whatever they want, but it's not cheap being a human. We've got bills and stuff man. So a Human will never gain stats after a battle, doesn't have access to any sort of special powers, just weapons, armor, and healing items. The upside to being human is, if you can afford it, there's a nice little shop that will sell you stat-boosting drugs! Funny thing, those drugs can boost anything except for INT.
Humans don't have to worry about those silly ability things, so they can carry a whole 8 items at a time. That means you can be fully armored, carry a few weapons, and still have some potions. Doin it all.

Item Types

There are 5 main types of items. All usable items and abilities have durability
Healing Items Have a potion bottle next to them. They heal you, or a battle buddy, equal to their strength. You can use a healing item in battle or in the field.
Weapons have a variety of icons. The icon showing tells you what stats are used to gauge your effectiveness with it. Weapons that use two stats are slightly stronger than weapons that only use one. Weapons have non-variable damage.

Axe	STR
Dagger	AGI
Book	INT
Sword	STR+AGI
Wand	STR+INT
Whip	INT+AGI

Abilities always use INT. Unlike weapons, though, ability damage can vary greatly.
Items look like a bag. Most of these are stat boosting items that only Humans can use. They do exactly what they say they do. You can't use these in battle.
Armor has four types. Theres no real difference in the types, but a party member can only equip one of each type of armor at a time. No wearing eight hats, sorry.

Stats

So, I mentioned some stats above. Have another table.

HP	This is your health
STR	Attack Stat
AGI	Attack Stat
INT	Attack Stat
CON	This is your base defence
DEF	This is your defence with armor equipped

Menus, items, and bags

So, in battle, you can't rearrange anything. When you hit the OK button, that's it, done.
In your field menu, when highlighting an item and pressing the OK button, that item is then selected. You can either hit OK again, to try to use the item, or move to another slot and hit OK to re-arrange your inventory. That's also how you're going to be moving items in and out of your bag.
If you want to get rid of an item (say you have 5 boots) you can do that too, just move an item into the trash can.

Saving and loading

Any time you reset this game, you're going to be set back at the initial state. Don't worry, as long as you saved, none of your party members or items are gone!

To save your game, open up your menu, navigate to save, and hit the OK button.
To load your game, open up your menu, navigate to load, and hit the OK button.

It really is that simple. I could only fit one save file in PICO-8's save ram, even if I could fit more, I wouldn't have the code space available to take advantage of it.

Playing the game

I didn't get to put in as much plot as I wanted, but the basic outline is still there. You are the generic heroes, you explore things, you find things. Kill the bad guys!

In town you'll see the Inn, the Guild, and the Shop. Press the Action button to talk to the people in charge to use the services

Inn will heal you back to full health, and restore Esper abilities to their original uses.
Guild will let you replace your party members with new ones, why play with the same characters all the time! I really like 3 Espers and 1 Human, but you might find something else you like.
Shop will give you some basic items, the weakest of the weapons, potions, and your stat boosters.

As you walk around, you'll probably have to kill some slimes. I mean, this is an RPG. You can probably figure out how battles go on your own. After a battle, you get some gold, your Espers might grow, and you might get an item. You can't buy armor, or the 2-stat weapons, but you might get some nice stuff as rewards..

In the cave, you'll run into some more guys, but they're a little less friendly. To trigger a boss fight, press the Action button as if talking to a NPC. You can't run away from a boss fight, probably a good idea to save first.

It's always a good idea to carry around a teleport when you go deep in the cave, you never know when you'll be in a tight spot!