So I downloaded a whole bunch of free or pay-what-you-want Game Boy games off itch.io for my Game Dad. They're all made with GB Studio (which is a free super-easy game-making program to make Game Boy games) and so far they're all pretty chill.
A highlight is Analog Age Rainy Day, which has you playing as a kid trying to survive a rainy day; catch is it's 1984 so there's no phones or game boy or anything so you've gotta find ways to amuse yourself.
A lovely benefit of using the Game Dad for Game Boy games is the ability to shift the palette so that it's red-on-black for playing in bed without giving me insomnia. It only works for Game Boy games though, not Game Boy Colour or Advance; I wish this were an option I could toggle in Retroarch for all my games.
I'm getting into the idea of writing my own Game Boy game and I think I want to make it about a tiny smol officeboy/retailboy who gets laid off and joins a moving company to make a bit of quick cash, and finds that he loves using his body and feeling those aches and becoming stronk. And like this is possible now, it's very do-able to make a game that isn't about saving the world or whatever, doesn't have to have mass appeal enough to justify burning a bunch of ROMs and moulding a bunch of cartridges, you can chuck it up on the internet as easily as we could copy a tape game in a boombox thirty years ago and if ten people fall in love with it then Hooray.
Add comment