GBA Jam 2022 is a months-long game jam asking indie developers to create brand-new titles for the Game Boy Advance, and it's happening right now.
Developers simply have to submit a playable GBA ROM file by October 31. Entries will be rated by a panel of judges, and the top-rated games will earn a share of a prize pool currently over $1,000 USD. The most notable rules are that submitted games must be able to run on actual GBAs or accurate emulators, the work must be original to the game jam, and there can be no NSFW content.
Over 200 participants have already signed up, but it'll be some time before we see what they're able to cook up. If you're coming here looking for new GBA games to play right now, though, you're still in luck. This is the second iteration of the jam, and GBA Jam 2021 has dozens of new GBA games for you to check out.
Last year's jam brought an incredible spread of games. There's Feline, a platformer where you play as a cat - sort of like a two-dimensional Stray. There's µCity Advance, a full-on city-building game for the handheld. Inheritors of the Oubliette brings a first-person dungeon-crawler to GBA with 3D environments and a unique lighting system. The top prize winner, Varooom 3D, even gets polygonal graphics running on GBA at a silky-smooth 60 frames per second.
In addition to the proper games, last year's jam also brought us some straight-up astounding tech demos. One project built a remote play function that runs through the GBA link cable. Another built the basic infrastructure for an MMORPG on the handheld. Yet another effectively recreated GoldenEye 007 as a single-player, four-way splitscreen game called GoldenGBA.
The developer behind GoldenGBA, who goes by 3DSage, has created an explainer video timed with this year's GBA Jam running down the basics of modern game creation for the retro handheld. Making games is always a challenge, but getting started in GBA development is a lot more simple than you might expect.
You can get full details on GBA Jam 2022 via the Itch.io page. If you want to participate, you've got two months to build your game - otherwise, you can look forward to seeing 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.
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