Why not develop a game?

Night shifts with my newborn son. During the day, I split my time between my family, retro gaming with Chrono Trigger on a retro handheld called TrimUI Brick, and building a Game Boy game.

Not a joke.

When I discovered an active community of people still developing games for old devices like the original Nintendo Game Boy, I fell down a rabbit hole. I found GB Studio, a no-code tool for building real Game Boy ROMs, and started experimenting.

I took Piranesi as inspiration. A book I couldn’t stop thinking about: a quiet, eerie world. A character who keeps notes. A house with endless halls, flooded by tides. I thought this could work as a first game, if I simplify it. Not an adaptation, but something shaped by the same atmosphere.

My name for it: Piranesian.

What it is now

Game Boy games come with some constraints:

• Only three colors for objects and four for backgrounds
• Mostly no-code logic, so no scripting in most cases
• Pre-built dialogue and text tools
• And more technical limitations I won’t get into

You have to be selective about what you build and how you tell your story. But I enjoy being creative within constraints.

What emerged is a world of 9 rooms arranged in a 3x3 grid. Each day, one of them is flooded. At night, you're returned to your “home” room. Progress happens slowly, through observation, memory, and repetition.

There are statues, each tied to one of Plato's virtues. And there’s only one other character: The Other, just like in the book. But why is he the only other human alive?

Most of the development happens during naps, with my laptop on the couch. Dialogue is written in Game Boy-sized text boxes. Sprite animations are made pixel by pixel. Some days, nothing happens. Other days, I make a leap.

Why I’m doing this

This is my little side project. A game built slowly, with limited sleep, in moments between family life and my main job.

Not to build a polished product. But to follow an idea that stuck. To be creative within limitations. To finish something small that matters to me.

And maybe also to say: you can build a game too.

With tools like GB Studio, you don’t need a background in programming. Communities like itch.io offer an unlimited amount of great assets. And with AI, like ChatGPT, you don’t have to start with a blank page. The whole idea of how to turn Piranesi into a playable experience came together through conversations I had with ChatGPT.

More soon.