Princess Mochi is an arcade on-rails shooter by Astropelican Games, released in September, 2026.
Inspired by Space Harrier from Sega arcades, Princess Mochi offers a similar variety of fast-paced high velocity gameplay and countless flocks of foes to crush.
Our princess got a jetpack, two pigtails and a whole town’s worth of mochi to carry home before dark.
Even though this sort of on-rails shooter may not be the best fit for a low resolution Pico-8 display, Astropelican Games have managed to perfectly recreate not only the feel and gameplay of the original title despite all limitations of our beloved virtual platform, they also made sure to deliver a smooth flow of never ending cakes and foes with zero hiccups or slowdowns, while adding their own tasty twist.
Dozens of large well crafted sprites look very impressive when they are coming at you at crazy speeds and the music theme adds to the atmosphere without distracting the player.
Fishcakes, pigeons and UFOs are very specific in their ways to approach our princess, and the only thing they have in mind is to make us fail to get rice cakes back home.
Taking down all these flying enemies never gets too easy, and it’s not always trivial to find the best position to target yet another snake-full of foes. This is when mochi cakes collected upon their defeat come to rescue with extra hearts, speed boosts and even more firepower.
If you decide to join me and help Princess Mochi too, I definitely recommend following the game’s advice and using the controller. Cursor keys are clearly not up to the task of moving our jet-powered girl around.
Princess Mochi gets a well deserved Avarian Thumbs Up!
Play the game on Lexaloffle Pico-8 BBS.
Developer’s Pico-8 BBS profile | Itch.io page | YouTube channel | X/Twitter.