The original GameBoy has quite a few years on its back, having turned 30 years old just yesterday, however it's by no means forgotten by gamers and amateur programmers alike. We've seen all kinds of interesting releases published after the console's end of life, ranging all the way from homebrew games to music production programs, yet a very peculiar piece of software has managed to take the community behind Nintendo's elderly handheld by storm: we're talking about GB Studio!

GB Studio is an open source retro adventure game creation software which lets you make your own homebrew games for the Game Boy with ease. It combines a premade engine with a visual game builder that requires no previous programming experience, which means anyone can get started and make their own games with little effort! Once done, said games can be exported either as standalone ROMs or web apps (thanks to a web-based emulator) with the click of a button.

Here are its key features, as highlighted by its official website:

• Visual game builder with no programming knowledge required.
• Design your graphics in any editor that can output PNG files e.g. Photoshop, Tiled, Aseprite.
• Example project included to get started right away.
• Make top down 2D JRPG style adventure games.
• Build real GB Rom files which can be played in an emulator or on device using USB Carts.
• Build a HTML5 playable game that also works on mobile and can deployed to any webserver or uploaded to Itch.io.
• Built for macOS, Windows and Linux.
• Supports both macOS light and dark mode.
• Includes the full tools that were used to build Untitled GB Game, free to play on Itch.io.

The application is cross-platform and offers prebuilt binaries for both Windows (32 and 64 bits, including a Squirrel package), macOS and Linux (DEB and RPM packages) and has been developed by Chris Maltby.
You can find a link to its website as well as its GitHub repo in the sources below.

Source
GitHub repo

 

[Ev1l0rd]

The aesthetic part I totally get. But they could be gb looking games that run natively on other devices without having to use an emulator.

It can also build to html5 (which can be put directly on itch.io or you can package it using one of the several tools out there to an application), so you won't need an emulator per se.

 

[samcambolt270]

this is pretty cool, but I just keep getting stuff irrevocably bugged in everything I make. It might be limitations to the gameboy coding, but I keep having issues where text boxes will be glitched, or some screens just wont display properly. I have no idea why they're happening, since everything i'v made appears as though it should work fine.
EDIT: I believe I'v figured out the glitchy screens issue. It was probably due to the screen having too many unique tiles.

 

[ParzivalWolfram]

Once CGB support is added, this is gonna be AMAZING. I'll probably make a tech demo or smth idfk

 

[raxadian]

Once CGB support is added, this is gonna be AMAZING. I'll probably make a tech demo or smth idfk

Early GBC games were just Gameboy colored games so just adding colors should be easy, while making GBC optimized code should be much harder.

 

[ParzivalWolfram]

Early GBC games were just Gameboy colored games so just adding colors should be easy, while making GBC optimized code should be much harder.

"Early" CGB games were DMG games with color, yes, but the palette was provided by the CGB BIOS. Real CGB-compatible games actually use the extra I/O, RAM, VRAM and DoubleSpeed mode when running on the CGB. Running as just a DMG on a CGB gives you issues. These can be seen easily in Pokemon Gen 1/2 if you cause a reset via a crash. Due to the reset, a lot of transitions and such are broken as the DMG has specific things the CGB doesn't do for... some reason. I dunno why, ask Nintendo.

Read the GBx tech docs for more info.

 

[raxadian]

"Early" CGB games were DMG games with color, yes, but the palette was provided by the CGB BIOS. Real CGB-compatible games actually use the extra I/O, RAM, VRAM and DoubleSpeed mode when running on the CGB. Running as just a DMG on a CGB gives you issues. These can be seen easily in Pokemon Gen 1/2 if you cause a reset via a crash. Due to the reset, a lot of transitions and such are broken as the DMG has specific things the CGB doesn't do for... some reason. I dunno why, ask Nintendo.

Read the GBx tech docs for more info.

Hence why I either used the "switch colors to grayscale trick" or used my Gameboy for Gameboy games. A lot of Gameboy games look awful in the GBC due to getting colored when they weren't supposed to.

My point was that making Gameboy games be in color would be easy while making actual GBC games would be hard.

 

[ParzivalWolfram]

My point was that making Gameboy games be in color would be easy while making actual GBC games would be hard.

I misconstrued that, sorry. The functions for coloring the grayscale are provided by the GBC BIOS, not the game itself.

 

[raxadian]

I misconstrued that, sorry. The functions for coloring the grayscale are provided by the GBC BIOS, not the game itself.

The game however is what decides what parts the GBC will color. Look at the difference between Pokemon Yellow and a random Gameboy game. One looks good in color, the other looks horrible.

 

[ParzivalWolfram]

The game however is what decides what parts the GBC will color. Look at the difference between Pokemon Yellow and a random Gameboy game. One looks good in color, the other looks horrible.

ok true

 

[KimKong]

They just released GBStudio 2!
And there is a lot of new cool stuff in this version. Worth checking out for anyone interested..

 

[raxadian]

They just released GBStudio 2!
And there is a lot of new cool stuff in this version. Worth checking out for anyone interested..

Still no Gameboy Color support?

 

[KimKong]

Still no Gameboy Color support?

Well.. There is color support - You can add a number of paletts to your scenes, and assign them to different areas of the map and characters. Each palett can hold 4 colors, and it seems you can add as many paletts as you want. But from what I can tell, you still cant save games as a .GBC extension..

I have been fiddling around with this tool for the last couple of days, and its really great. A bit limited for my taste.. But still very good! I might use this to make a couple of games in the near future!

EDIT:
I would call this a GBC game though..

 

[raxadian]

Well.. There is color support - You can add a number of paletts to your scenes, and assign them to different areas of the map and characters. Each palett can hold 4 colors, and it seems you can add as many paletts as you want. But from what I can tell, you still cant save games as a .GBC extension..

I have been fiddling around with this tool for the last couple of days, and its really great. A bit limited for my taste.. But still very good! I might use this to make a couple of games in the near future!

EDIT:
I would call this a GBC game though..

How about making a contest?

 

[KimKong]

How about making a contest?

Make a GBStudio contest..? Yeah that would be pretty cool! I would probably join something like that, if somebody set it up..

 

[raxadian]

Make a GBStudio contest..? Yeah that would be pretty cool! I would probably join something like that, if somebody set it up..

Maybe someone should tell the GBAtemp staff about it... problem would be posting download links as even if the games have custom sprites they would be kind of breaking copyright.

 

[KimKong]

Maybe someone should tell the GBAtemp staff about it... problem would be posting download links as even if the games have custom sprites they would be kind of breaking copyright.

Hmm, yeah I guess that would be kind of a problem.. Maybe there's a way around it somehow..?

 

[raxadian]

Hmm, yeah I guess that would be kind of a problem.. Maybe there's a way around it somehow..?

I guess gameplay videos that don't have links in the decription would be okay?

 

[KimKong]

I guess gameplay videos that don't have links in the decription would be okay?

Maybe.. But the best way to to get the feel of a game is to play it yourself! I guess a video would be a good alternative though!

 

[raxadian]

Maybe.. But the best way to to get the feel of a game is to play it yourself! I guess a video would be a good alternative though!

Well however is the judge could play the games then pick ten or so for voting.

Then the winner gets a price and the people in the forum can google search for or or something.