It’s been quiet on the devlog front, but that doesn’t mean things haven’t been busy behind the scenes!

Lots of new features have been implemented:

• Pressing START while in game now shows a placeholder options screen!
• Pressing SELECT while in game now shows a placeholder map screen! (No map yet though.)
• Some sound effects added!
• Jump physics messed about with!
• A rudimentary damage and health bar system has been implemented!

• A key card can be found on another floor…

• and then used to unlock a door!

• And if you noticed, there’s also a new sprite animation for climbing ladders! In fact, all the player sprites have been spruced up a little!

• And speaking of floors, there is now an elevator! (Press UP to enter. Try pressing UP elsewhere too… you might find an easter egg or two.)

• And the biggest change of all… now the game is no longer for the original DMG or Pocket Game Boy :(

The switch to Game Boy Color makes me a little sad, as I really wanted to see it running on my old DMG, but certain things I’d wanted to do just needed a bit more CPU grunt. Switching to GBC meant that instead of just 8Hz, the game would now run with 16Hz on the CPU, which is a great boost.

Of course this also means I can now take advantage of the GBC’s more varied colour palette… but that also means more work on my end. Right now the colors are all over the place, as you’ll see when playing the demo. It’s quite tedious managing the different palettes and making sure everything is consistent on screen, so I might be saving this thing till near the end of MVM and I’ll sort it out if I have time.