GB Maker

GB Maker is my attempt at making Game Boy development fun, simple, and actually approachable.

Game made in GB Maker: DIAM

It's a complete little development environment for making games for the original Game Boy. You write code, make sprites, build maps, create music, hit RUN, and eventually compile everything into a real ".gb" ROM.

No visual-block programming. You actually write your game.
And yes, you can put the ROM on a flash cart and run it on a REAL GAME BOY :)
WHY DOES THIS EXIST?
My dad had a Game Boy when he was a teenager.
Many years later, I got to play it. I loved the thing.
Then he sold it.

:(

Fast forward a bit and I got REALLY into retro hardware. Modding consoles, soldering tiny things, installing IPS screens, messing with old hardware and generally taking apart stuff that probably worked perfectly fine before I touched it.
Game Boys became especially fun to work on.
Eventually I thought:

What if I made my own Game Boy game?

There are already ways to do that, obviously. But I wanted something that felt like its own little IDE. Something where I could just open a project and start making stuff without juggling a bunch of separate programs.

So I started building it for myself.
And, well...
Now it's GB Maker.
I liked it enough that I decided other people should be able to mess around with it too.

WHAT CAN IT DO?

// CODE EDITOR

GB Maker uses its own Lua-like scripting language.

It's designed to be pretty easy to pick up while still letting you actually program your game. Write the logic yourself, mess with things, break things, fix them, repeat.

// SPRITE EDITOR

Draw your sprites without leaving the program.
Proper tiny Game Boy pixel art included.

// MAP EDITOR

Build maps and levels using tiles, then use them directly in your game.

// MUSIC EDITOR

Because making a Game Boy game without BEEPS and BLOOPS would be a crime.
Create music for your project directly inside GB Maker.

// BUILT-IN EMULATOR

Hit RUN and test your game.
Change something.
Hit RUN again.
Realize you broke everything.
Fix it.
Repeat.

// REAL .GB ROMS

This is the important part.
GB Maker doesn't just make something that looks like a Game Boy game.
It compiles your project into an actual ".gb" ROM.
Play it in an emulator, throw it onto a flash cartridge, or boot it on original hardware.
And all games you make withGB Maker fully belong to you!
https://gbmaker.com/legal.html 

// LINK CABLE SUPPORT

Yep.
You can make 2-player games using the Game Boy Link Cable.
Two Game Boys. Two cartridges. One cable.
Just like it's 90s again.

// WORKS OFFLINE

No accounts. No cloud project nonsense.
GB Maker is a desktop program and your projects live on your computer.
Open it and make games.

THE GOAL

I don't want GB Maker to magically make games for you.
That's boring.

The goal is to make the annoying parts of getting started with Game Boy development easier, while keeping the fun part: actually programming a ridiculously tiny computer from 1989.

The Game Boy has a tiny screen.
Four shades.
Very little memory.
A CPU that would probably lose a benchmark against your microwave.
And people still made Pokémon, Tetris, Zelda and hundreds of other games for it.
That's what makes it interesting.

GB Maker is my little love letter to that hardware and to the whole retro modding scene that got me interested in it in the first place.

I originally built it because I wanted to make a Game Boy game.

Now you can use it too.

GO MAKE SOMETHING CRAZY.
GB Maker website