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[SystemsTestCanary]

A guy I know is making a game, called Tremblay Island, for the Game Boy Advance. There is a substantial demo out already, though the game is still in development. The game has only one dev, who also makes the (lovely) art and music!

The developer has described it as follows:

Tremblay Island is a half-visual novel, half-island-sim for the Gameboy Advance. My goal is to have at least 4 playable characters, 2 hours of playtime, a full overworld, and 16 mini-games. It's separated into 4 1/2 chapters, based on seasons: "early winter" is the introduction and is already playable from the GitHub ROM!

The game is about a group of friends' experience moving onto a deserted island. Gameplay involves exploring the island and completing minigames as various characters, all playable.
Watch the minute-long trailer
Images
get the demo(s) from the GitHub repository!
join the Discord server

[EuchreJack]

Reminds me of the Harvest Moon series, where they offer 2 hours or so of content, but make you repeat it for 40+ hours.  Ergo why I usually fight the temptation to boot that game back up.

So this could become quite the marketable game!

[sambojin]

I'll have a crack at it on my phone tomorrow.

If it is any good, you should tell your friend to see if the Devs of an emulator want to bundle it in with one. Even just a demo of it. Would really help the word get around about a game.

[Virtz]

for the Game Boy Advance

I'm not one to criticize, I'm mostly just curious, but... why?

It's not the first time I've seen people do this (like all the amiga and commodore projects that still get made), I'm just a bit baffled as to what drives them given game making is time consuming enough on its own. I don't imagine it's because he started making it before smart phones were a thing.

[BigD145]

for the Game Boy Advance

I'm not one to criticize, I'm mostly just curious, but... why?

It's not the first time I've seen people do this (like all the amiga and commodore projects that still get made), I'm just a bit baffled as to what drives them given game making is time consuming enough on its own. I don't imagine it's because he started making it before smart phones were a thing.

Inherently you make the game small. Small code base. Small graphics footprint. Coding for GBA is well documented. Lots of resources for assistance. With GBA vs DS you don't have to worry about a touch screen on emulators. Emulators for GBA are on just about every piece of electronics with a screen for the past decade or more. This thing will play in any ecosystem. Got a PSP but no GBA? Emulate and play. Got a phone? Same. You could probably find an emulator that works on Android 2.0.

[Frumple]

Seems to be multiple, actually.

Some folks just like homebrew, there's apparently a particular sort of accomplishment/enjoyment/whatever in making something with the same junk as an older generation of machines. It's like folks making cart functional NES games or somethin'. It's a neat sort of project, there doesn't have to be more motivation for it than that.

[SystemsTestCanary]

I'll have a crack at it on my phone tomorrow.

If it is any good, you should tell your friend to see if the Devs of an emulator want to bundle it in with one. Even just a demo of it. Would really help the word get around about a game.

Good idea, I'll let him know.

for the Game Boy Advance

I'm not one to criticize, I'm mostly just curious, but... why?

It's not the first time I've seen people do this (like all the amiga and commodore projects that still get made), I'm just a bit baffled as to what drives them given game making is time consuming enough on its own. I don't imagine it's because he started making it before smart phones were a thing.

Inherently you make the game small. Small code base. Small graphics footprint. Coding for GBA is well documented. Lots of resources for assistance. With GBA vs DS you don't have to worry about a touch screen on emulators. Emulators for GBA are on just about every piece of electronics with a screen for the past decade or more. This thing will play in any ecosystem. Got a PSP but no GBA? Emulate and play. Got a phone? Same. You could probably find an emulator that works on Android 2.0.

This. He did try making a game for NES, but found that there was too much boilerplate involved with the tools he had available, IIRC.
You can even play this game on a Wii using the Wii version of VBA-GX.

[SystemsTestCanary]

Update: the first release of the game (and a few bugfix releases) has been launched, and is available on itch.io!

The entire game - including textures, music, etc. - was made solely by the dev, Cinement, except for a few audio clips voice-acted by other people.

Open source and (if you wish) free!

I've played a fair amount of the game so far, and I quite like how it's turned out.

Links:
Itch.io page
GitHub (including source!)
Story trailer (more substantial than 1-minute trailer)

[dragdeler]

That frenglish  . Will probably throw it on an everdrive this evening.