Welcome to Save our Heritage.

This is a brief demo of a Game Boy Color game that was made using GBStudio, Tiled, and GIMP. This was inspired by my love for games like Mario Brothers and Metroid! Everything in the game was coded and created by myself for my 2024 Capstone project. The project was focused on learning how to code efficiently with limited resources. Also because this era of videogames is among my favorites of all time.

The game is about a young traveler who is out exploring looking for a new place for his family to relocate to. He then stumbles across an abandoned-looking building. But to his surprise, it was home to a goblin king. Your goal is to retrieve your family's heritage and get out of the lair alive!

There is a download for the custom Game Boy Color ROM at the end of this page. It also includes some of the backgrounds, sprites, and the direct picture files from below to look at!

Click game screen if inputs are not being recognized!

Controls:

• Up Arrow / W - Interact with doors
• Left - Left Arrow / A.
• Right - Right Arrow / D.
• A - Alt / Z / J. (Jump  or interact with item)
• B - Ctrl / K / X. (Shoot weapon)
• Start - Enter.
• Select - Shift.

More details on the game below.

***Includes SPOILERS!!***

For reference below, when I mention a tile, that is a 8x8 pixel chunk that GB studio uses for measurement, among other things.

This tile set was used to create the levels. You select each tile and place it down to create the environment. The gameboy has a very limited amount of unique tiles you can use, so you have to get creative on how you use each tile. This tile set was created in GIMP and then transfered over to Tiled to create the backgrounds for the game.

Full GB level background before coloration for GBC.

(2040x400 px)

Secret Room:

Whole Demo Game Rooms Overview in color.

Shows collision boxes and sprites as well. The main room was split into four parts to optimize performance in the game due to CPU limit. By splitting it I was able to add more enemies, health drops, and more animations to each level and not impact performance.

The art direction for the game was inspired by Lord of the Rings, Skyrim dungeons, and Mario caves. I really like how it all turned out.

Animated fire is created by cycling between each frame on a timer, this principle is also used for animating the lava as well.

All sprites were created in GIMP using the 4 Gameboy default colors, then inside of GBStudio using the GB to GBC paint converter to add color later.

(Second Image is zoomed in to see the tiles, first is actual size.)

Hit Detection

This is a basic custom hit detection system overview of what happens when a player is hit by either a projectile or physically by an enemy in Group 3. GBStudio gives you three different groups to be hit by, so you can add variation to how the player gets interacted with. What I did for Group 3 was when a player is hit, it disables player collision, decreases the health, sets the health bar to the frame number that matches the health, then the player flashes, and then collision is enabled. 

SPOILER: To get the final boss door to open you will need at least 4 of your treasures to be in your possession. Here is an example of treasure below! 

Also, could there be a secret passage that can be found with this door handle?

Thank you for checking out my game, any feedback is greatly appreciated!