Remember 1989? I do. It was the year Nintendo unleashed a handheld heavy hitter on the world: the one and only, Game Boy. Now, 34 years later, it’s (almost) time for Game Boy Showdown 2023, a game jam which tasks participants not with simply making a new game in the style of the Game Boy, but something capable of running on the actual device!
While creating a new Game Boy (or Game Boy Color) game in 2023 might sound like a daunting task, it isn’t. Not with tools like RGBDS, GBDK, ZGB, and GB Studio readily available. It’s not the simplest thing ever either, sure, but at least there are ways to go about it that don’t involve, you know, coding everything from scratch.
As for the format: seven days of jamming, followed by seven days of voting (Submitters, Sponsors, and Helpers only), based on Game Design, Gameplay, Innovation, Graphics, and Sound & Theme. Oh, and there are prizes for the winners, too. Real nice prices, in fact. Even so, I’d strongly recommend participating to have fun rather than compete – much like with every other game jam.
Still with me? Great, because there are still a couple of important tidbits (and yet more on the jam page): no NSFW or offensive stuff! No fan games, remakes, demakes or rom hacks either, and no exceptions. Rule violations can exclude you from winning any of the prizes or worse, have your submission removed entirely. Theme? That’ll be revealed exactly 1 hour before the jam begins, on May 14, 2023.
Now, with all that in mind, who’s ready for Game Boy Showdown 2023?
(Screenshot is from last year’s Game Boy Showdown entry, The Garden of Thyme.)