GBA Jam 2022 is a months-long game jam asking indie developers to create entirely new titles for the Game Boy Advance, and it’s happening right now.
Developers simply need to submit a playable GBA ROM file before October 31st. Entries will be scored by a panel of judges, and the highest rated games will earn a share of a prize pool that currently exceeds $1,000 USD. The most notable rules are that submitted games must be able to run on actual GBA or accurate emulators, the work must be original to the game, and there can be no NSFW content.
Over 200 participants have already signed up, but it will be some time before we see what they can cook up. However, if you come here looking for new GBA games to play right now, you are still in luck. This is the second iteration of the jam, and GBA Jam 2021 (opens in a new tab) has dozens of new GBA games for you to try.
Last year’s Jam brought an incredible variety of games. there is feline (opens in a new tab), a platform game in which you play as a cat, something like a two-dimensional Stray. There is µCity Advance (opens in a new tab), a complete city building game for portable devices. Heirs of the Oubliette (opens in a new tab) brings a first-person dungeon crawler to GBA with 3D environments and a unique lighting system. The winner of the first prize, Varooom 3D (opens in a new tab)you even get polygonal graphics running on GBA at a speed of 60 frames per second.
In addition to the proper games, last year’s jam also brought us some amazing tech demos. A project created a remote playback feature (opens in a new tab) going through the GBA link cable. Another built the basic infrastructure for an MMORPG (opens in a new tab) on the handheld. Yet another effectively recreated GoldenEye 007 as a single-player four-player split-screen game called GoldenGBA. (opens in a new tab).
The developer behind GoldenGBA, who goes by the name 3DSage, has created an explainer video timed with this year’s GBA Jam that explains the basics of creating modern games for the retro handheld. Creating games is always a challenge, but getting started with GBA development is much simpler than you might expect.
You can get full details on GBA Jam 2022 via the Itch.io page (opens in a new tab). If you want to participate, you have two months to build your game; otherwise, you can expect to see the final results after the game jam closes on October 31.
If you’re feeling nostalgic, check out our list of the best gba games.
