The first demo (version 0.1.0) of Dusky Dungeon was my original submission for the Game Boy Competition 2021. Initially I wanted to submit a rhythm game, but I couldn’t realise my idea with the self built GB Studio 3 alpha back then.
So I started to work on Dusky Dungeon only about a month before the competitions deadline. Due to the short amount of time I wasn’t able to completely flesh out all the basic ideas I had for Dusky Dungeon and could only submit a demo with a single level.
After submitting the first version I needed a bit of a break from game development. Nevertheless my plan was to continue to work on Dusky Dungeon. So I picked it up about a month after the competition ended and am now happy to have an updated demo for you to play.

So what’s new in version 0.2.0?

• A second level (the blue one) with 10 floors, teleports and a boss fight at the end of it
• Overhauled weapon mechanics
• Bigger boss sprites
• An Analogue Pocket version 

GB Studio 3

Porting Dusky Dungeon to GB Studio 3 was a tedious task and took me quite a few days, but the new GB Studio features made it worth it.

As you might have noticed weapons in the game look basically the same, they only differ in colour. Setting the weapon colour is only possible thanks to the new sprite palettes feature of GB Studio 3. But what’s the idea behind the different weapon colours? The weapon mechanic in Dusky Dungeon is based on a rock, paper, scissors concept. The blue weapon deals more damage to enemies in the red level and the red weapon deals more damage in the green level, which isn’t implemented yet. So it’s a bit like the types in Pokemon.

The bigger sprites and Analogue Pocket build are also new GB Studio 3 features.

Let’s Play

As I was nearly finished with the updated demo, the wonderful GumpyFunction offered to give feedback on work in progress Game Boy games. This is how the following Let’s Play video, full off helpful improvement ideas, came about: