Right around the 30th anniversary of the release of Nintendo’s iconic handheld, game developer Chris Maltby has released a free tool to create Game Boy-inspired games.
The project is a visual game builder called GB Studio and launched as a free download last week. It’s a project born from a Game Boy-inspired game jam, and one that aims to offer a way for anyone to build playable, 2D adventure games with no programming knowledge what-so-ever.
The tool is a little limited in what it offers and is designed to create top-down 2D JRPG-styled adventure games. Because of that, however, GB Studio is accessible to those with any level of game development experience.
Any project created with the visual game builder can be exported as an HTML5 file, which allows it to be played in a browser or uploaded to sites like itch.io, or a ROM that can then be played through a Game Boy editor or on the actual hardware itself via a flash cart.
More information, including documentation, a download link, and GitHub page, can be found on the GB Studio website.