Legend of the Plywood Pub

As a personal side project, I wanted to challenge myself to learn how to develop a video game. I had no prior experience, and modern games can feel almost impossibly complex, so I decided to start with a system that seemed simple: the Game Boy.

Of course, simple does not equal easy. The Game Boy format doesn't really allow for one-off design. Limited memory, screen space, colour, and controls mean that every sprite, tile, room, menu, and interaction needs to be part of a larger system.

That has made the project feel surprisingly close to my design systems work. I’m not just creating individual screens or assets. I’m defining a small set of reusable parts, establishing rules for how they combine, and using that limited kit to create enough variation, clarity, and atmosphere for the world to feel alive.

What started as a way to make the learning curve feel smaller quickly became an exercise in constraint, reuse, and system design.

I used GB Studio, a visual development tool for building Game Boy games. It let me build through scenes, sprites, triggers, events, and visual scripting, using concepts that already felt familiar: spaces, components, states, flows, rules, and interactions. The tool made the logic of development more visible, letting me define how systems behave, how choices affect outcomes, how menus work, and how the world responds to the player.

Every sprite, background, and interface element was drawn by me, pixel by pixel. The music was composed and sequenced by me, note by note. It was a deeply hands-on process, and I had a blast figuring out how to work within the constraints, quirks, and challenges the platform threw my way.