8 Best GBA Homebrew Games

Inky is a flapjack octopus who gets abducted and put on display in an aquarium on an alien mothership. When the aliens drop and break the tank, Inky makes a break for it. It is a push puzzle game with an open map, so every room is a block pushing puzzle, and some puzzles stretch across more than one room. Along the way you rescue the other abducted sea creatures and collect unusual items that unlock more sections of the ship.

Pocket Pulp, the small team behind it, gives you no instructions on how to solve anything, in the spirit of The Witness. The hardest puzzles are optional, so you can still reach the end without them. There is a free demo if you want to try it first. Players who like puzzle games keep recommending it to other GBA owners, usually right next to the biggest names on this list.

Green Memories is set in a dystopian future marked by extreme weather and wrecked by human wars. A team of scientists disappears after a terrible disaster, and a few years later a second team is sent to recover their instruments and find clues. You play Cytra, a young scientist looking for answers while she dreams of a new green world. It is an action RPG with sandbox and shooter elements, and its pixel art takes after the best-looking GBA games.

Tengukaze Studio first made a demo for the Game Boy Advance, and it won the GBA Jam 2022. The full game is still under development, and updates were still coming out in 2026. The studio has even produced its own cartridges. Players who have tried it keep pointing other GBA fans to it, a little surprised more people are not talking about it.

Blind Jump is an adventure game for the Game Boy Advance with procedurally generated levels, collectible items and a boss fight every so often. Holding the A button shoots and also makes you strafe while you walk, which takes a minute to get used to. Once you unlock the map item, holding the left bumper opens a minimap. A friend with a link cable can join you for multiplayer.

It comes from the same developer who made Skyland, two places higher on this list. You copy the ROM to a flash cartridge or run it in an emulator, and that is the whole setup. Players who know the GBA homebrew scene keep recommending it, often in the same breath as Skyland. The two make a good pair: one is fast and twitchy, the other gives you time to think.

Anguna is a top-down fantasy action-adventure with five dungeons and a large overworld to explore. It came out for the Game Boy Advance in 2008 with art by Chris Hildenbrand, and a Nintendo DS version was finished in December of that year. Your kit includes a sword, bow and arrows, bear traps, dynamite, a lantern and magic boots, and the map is full of hidden rooms, secrets and powerups.

It has since been remade for the Atari 2600 and the NES, which is not a bad run for a game one person made for fun. Players who want a Zelda-style adventure on their GBA keep pointing to Anguna, and some talk up how big its world feels. If you grew up wishing the GBA had more top-down Zelda, this is a good place to find it.

Skyland is a simple strategy game where you build flying castles and fight other players with them. It was a submission to GBA Jam 2021, and it runs on a real Game Boy Advance, with link cable multiplayer for two players. Play it on a GameCube through the Game Boy Player and it even supports rumble. An average session takes about half an hour.

The game now has a native Windows version on Steam, but its own page still hosts the GBA edition. Players describe it as a game you can easily hop in and out of, and they keep telling other GBA owners it is a must. They also praise how modern and polished it looks, which is not what most people expect from a free cartridge game about castles in the sky.

Powder is a roguelike designed for the Game Boy Advance and Nintendo DS. Like the old roguelikes it borrows from, no two games are the same and death is permanent: you die, that is it. Your job is to go down through the dungeon to the foul daemon Baezl'bub, kill him and carry his black heart back to the surface world. The game's own page calls him "He who the author cannot spell consistently".

Its author first touched the code in January 2003 and was still marking the anniversary in 2026. Powder later spread to other systems, but players who want a classic roguelike on their GBA keep coming back to it. Some of them call it one of the best traditional roguelikes on any system, handheld or not.

Goodboy Galaxy is an exploration platformer made for the Game Boy Advance's 20th anniversary by Rik Nicol and Jeremy Clarke. You play Maxwell, a space travelling dog who flees his home world and gets stranded on an unknown planet after his spaceship is attacked. Its makers name Metroid and Cave Story as inspirations. You work through twisting levels with a jet pack and a blaster, and there are over fifty characters to befriend.

It started life as a game jam prototype called Goodboy Advance, and fans crowdfunded £203,929 to finish it. The full game came out on 23 November 2023 as the first full commercial GBA release in over 13 years, and Time Extension gave it 9/10. Players say it would have been a huge success if it had come out while the GBA was still in shops, and some already count it among the essential games on the system.

Apotris is a free, open-source block stacking game, and if that sounds a lot like Tetris, that is the point. It was originally designed for the Game Boy Advance and now runs on all kinds of platforms. It has 14 game modes, from Marathon and Sprint to Master, where you chase the highest grade while the game gets aggressively faster, and Zen, where the goal is to relax. Up to 5 players can battle, with link cables or wireless adapters on the GBA.

Its old download page had its files suspended over a copyright claim, which tells you how close it gets to the real thing. The game moved to its maker's own site, where it is still actively maintained. Players call it the best version of Tetris there is, and they recommend it more than any other GBA homebrew by a long way. Once it goes on a flash cart, it tends to stay there.