With the city mockup looking nice, the first think I had to try was prototyping the core feature of the game. It's not walking nor jumping but PUNCHING. 

Because of Pico-8 limitations I thought it would be a good idea to make the arm-fist animation procedural, saving sprite space. But would that look nice? 

Well, not that bad! Head and body are a single sprite, although I may separate them in later stages. But arm and fist are just filled circles drawn along a line. I can easily set the length and angle for the 6-directional punches, so pretty good indeed! There are also some tweaks, like raising the shoulder when needed and stopping the animation for some milliseconds when the fist hits. All in all the test is passed. 

Here's the big monke... uops, ape, APE, punching around!