12 Best Game Boy Homebrew Games

Some games earn a spot with their name alone, and this one would win that contest without breaking a sweat. Super Jacked Up Tomato Face Johnson keeps turning up when players list the new Game Boy games worth playing, usually right next to much better known homebrew.

One fan summed it up as "a fast paced, tight 2D platformer", and that is the whole pitch. It is also the game on this list that the fewest people have heard of, which makes it a good one to load up after you have played the famous ones. Say the name out loud to a friend first. They will want to know what it is.

Fydo's Magic Tiles is a match-four action puzzle game that came out in September 2022, with art by Tom Sutton. You grab a tile and slide it until four or more line up, vertical or horizontal, and they clear from the board. Match six or more and a combo starts, and if you want to finish the game there are 17 Star Tiles to find and unlock. The whole game is 32 kilobytes, which is smaller than most photos on your phone.

Max Chappell wrote the music, three tracks the game's own page proudly calls bangers. It is now free to download, ROM and manual included. Players who want a puzzle game for their Game Boy keep pointing to this one.

Porklike started as a PICO-8 game by Krystian Majewski, and Ben Smith ported it to the original Game Boy with his permission. It is a classic, turn-based roguelike. You enter the tower of Wurstlord, climb through nine floors of dangerous traps and enemies, and try to steal his legendary Kielbasa. Ben Smith wrote the port in C with GBDK2020, and the full source code is public.

It was a submission to the Game Boy Competition 2021, and you can run it right in your browser from its page. Players keep suggesting it to anyone hunting for new Game Boy games. The sausage jokes never let up, and the game is better for it. Move carefully, because one bad step on floor eight ends the run.

Unearthed comes from BenJelter and Gumpy Function, and it was the winner of the GBCOMPO21 game jam. You play Max, a husband, father and employee of a mining giant called Deep Space Mineral Retrieval. He pilots a mech into the depths of planets to dig up his quota of minerals, and he finds a lot more than mineral deposits down there.

The 2024 Edition grew the jam game into a full release with over 80 levels of increasing complexity, and the 2021 jam version is still free as a demo. Every level has optional Par and Best scores, so there is always a reason to replay one. Players looking for a Game Boy puzzle game name it alongside the best of them, and the story gives you a reason to keep digging.

Pineapple Kid - The Puzzle Adventure is a puzzle game by HZ83 for the original Game Boy, the grey DMG model. The free download on its page is the full game, and it asks one thing of you: can you get a good hi-score? There is also a physical DX version from ModRetro, and it adds a color version and a map builder among its extras.

Players who like puzzle games put it near the top of their homebrew picks. It is one of those games where the rules fit in a sentence and the later stages still make you put the console down and think for a minute. It is a small game with a big appetite for your free time.

Dangan GB is a short boss-rush bullet-hell shooter by snorpung, with music and sound by nordloef, released for the Game Boy to celebrate its anniversary. There are six bosses, each with several phases, and the screen fills with bullets with no flicker and no slowdown. Anyone who has watched sprites blink out in an old Game Boy shooter knows how strange that looks on this hardware.

Its own page warns that it was made to be somewhat hard but fair, and that it may not appeal to a casual player. It means it. Players single it out as the bullet hell game to play on the Game Boy. Read the short manual first, as the page suggests, and then get ready to see the first boss a lot.

Dragonborne is a Game Boy RPG and one of the older games on this list. It came out on the original Game Boy first, and a DX version followed later. Players were looking forward to getting its DX version, and it is the one to look for today.

It came out back when a new Game Boy game on a real cartridge was still unusual, and it was one of the early releases that showed a homebrew RPG could be done properly. The stream of carts that came after proves the point. If you want to see where a lot of the games on this list got their start, this is a good place to look.

Black Castle is the kind of game that looks like nothing in a screenshot. Players describe a short, simple action game that is a lot more fun than it looks, and they say its bare graphics have plenty of charm. You jump and shoot your way through it, and that is about all there is to explain.

It also has a fan club that overlaps with another homebrew favorite. Players often name it in the same breath as Repugnant Bounty, so if Black Castle clicks with you, that one is the obvious next game. It is a quick game that you can finish in a sitting, and a good one to show anyone who thinks new Game Boy games must be fancy to be fun.

GB-Wordyl by bbbbbr is a word game for the Game Boy and Game Boy Color, and it also runs on the Analogue Pocket and the MegaDuck. You can play the browser version on its page or put the ROM on a flash cart, and Ferrante Crafts sells a physical cartridge. There is a Cornish language version too, which is not a sentence we expected to write about a Game Boy game.

If you have played Wordle on your phone, you already know how it works. There are RetroAchievements pages for it as well. Players say it is perfect for a few minutes at a time, and some of them admit they cannot put it down. It is the game on this list most likely to become a daily habit.

The Machine is by BenJelter, the same developer behind Unearthed, and Incube8 published it in 2022. You play a little guy named Girt who lives inside the machine. Girt can choose any career he wants, as long as he has good enough test scores, and Girt forgot to study for his tests. The developer calls it a 'pancake adventure': the story is short but very wide, so a second play-through can go somewhere totally different.

Score higher on the test and new careers open up the next time you play, and your choices affect the direction the machine's society goes. An average session runs about an hour. Players who have played it rank it among the best Game Boy homebrew they know, and they often name it in the same breath as Deadeus.

Tobu Tobu Girl is an arcade platformer for the Game Boy by Tangram Games, with an original soundtrack by potato-tan. Your cat is floating into the atmosphere, and you are the only one who can save it. You climb by bouncing off enemies' heads and flapping your arms, while racing against the clock. You can only dash three times, and you land on an enemy to regain dashes.

An improved Game Boy Color-compatible version was released in 2019, and many players point to that DX version. Players say it is fun and polished, hard enough to keep you going without making you angry. The goal is simple and getting good takes ages, like the best arcade games. It is still name your own price on its page.

Deadeus is a horror game by -IZMA-, developed using Chris Maltby's GB Studio engine, with music by Stuart Busby. A small boy has a prophetic nightmare telling him everyone will die in three days, and he has to investigate his village to see how he can save them, if at all. The game has 11 endings and no direct path, so working out what to do is the whole game.

Nintendo Force called it "a masterclass in efficiency" and gave it a 9.5. The download is name your own price, and Incube8 later put it out on a physical cartridge. Players who have played it keep calling it a must, and players recommend it more than any other Game Boy homebrew. Getting real dread out of a Game Boy screen is hard, and this one does it.