[Beta] GB Corp. (Game Boy)

Hi everyone!

I hope everything is fine for you, and you had a good summer. On my end, I've been working on a new Game Boy game, for the currently running GB Compo 2021.

I've got quite a late start in this competition, but to thank you for your support I'm happy to share the first beta version of my game here: GB Corp.

At its core, the game is quite simple: it's an incremental / idle game. You hire consoles from the Game Boy line (Original GB, GB Pocket, GB Color and Super Game Boy), and they work for your "push button" company. When you have earn enough money, you can hire more employees, and upgrade the ones you have so they bring back more income. Also, you must be careful to the power levels: change the batteries of your employees when they are empty!

While the concept is quite simple, this game also has a unique feature: the consoles you hire are effectively working only when you run the game on the same console model! So, to put your GBC employees to work, you need to play the game on an actual Game Boy Colour (or set your emulator to "GBC mode"). If you want to make your GBP employees active instead, you'll have to unplug the cartridge and put it into a Game Boy Pocket from your collection (or change your emulator settings). The game uses a SRAM save, so the game progress is kept while switching consoles.

More than a gimmick, this "console change" is a real gameplay mechanic. When you only have a handful of employees, changing batteries isn't a burden. But when you employ dozens of them, it costs loads of money. However, when you switch from one console model to another (say, you switch the cart from a GBC to an original GB), all the active employees get a new set of batteries for free!

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There are no help nor tutorial in this first beta (and I'm not sure there will be in the competition version either), so here are some additional instructions :

D-Pad : select employees

A : recharge batteries

B: upgrade employee / hire a new employee (if the cubicle is empty)

SELECT : fire an employee (warning, it costs money too!)

Each time you upgrade the level of an employee, or hire / fire someone, the cost of these actions increase. However, the more experienced your employees are, the more money they bring!

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The best way to play this game is on a Flashcart with a collection of different Game Boy model at your disposal (at least 2, but if you only have 1 it'll work too, although you won't be able to benefit from the "free charge" bonus).

If you are testing the ROM on a emulator, I heavily recommend you to use BGB:

https://bgb.bircd.org/

In the emulator settings (Right Click > Options), on the "System" panel, you can configure which type of GB model must be active. Each time you modify the setting, you'll have to hit the "Apply" button, and then to reset the emulator (press * on your keyboard). That way, you can easily change from one console model to another.

The game is saving your progress automatically every second, so don't worry about losing any progress.

Technically wise, the game relies on a MBC5 mapper for maximum compatibility with emulator and FlashCart, but as you can see from the small ROM size, it actually doesn't require a MBC but only 8kb of SRAM to run.

Oh, and the game is coded in C with GBDK-2020, and I'll release the source code alongside the final version.

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I hope you weren't scared by this long text, and that you'll enjoy the game, although it's still in a WIP state.

The competition ends in 10 days, so any feedback / suggestion / idea is very welcome! :)