Skip to main content
Brian Sunter

Pogo Panic

A tiny Game Boy arcade platformer built with GBDK-2020. You're always bouncing on a pogo stick: steer, stomp cracked blocks, grab the battery, reach the exit.

Visit Project View Source
project Game Boy GBDK-2020 C Vite Game Dev
Cover image for Pogo Panic

Overview

Pogo Panic is a real DMG Game Boy game. The player is always bouncing on a pogo stick; you can’t stop, only steer. The build is a 32 KB ROM compiled with GBDK-2020 that runs unmodified on original hardware, flashcarts, and standalone emulators. A small Vite browser runner loads the same .gb file through gameboy-emulator so anyone can try it without a flashcart.

The ROM is the canonical artifact: gameplay rules, level generation, save handling, and music all live in C. The browser shell is treated as a demo and never re-implements game logic.

Pogo Panic Adventure room gameplay screenshot
Pogo Panic Adventure room gameplay screenshot

Gameplay

  • Steer left and right; you can’t stop bouncing
  • A stomps to break cracked blocks and rocks
  • B tilts for a short hop
  • Collect the golden battery, then reach the exit door

Modes

  • Adventure: 80 curated fixed rooms with SRAM-backed unlocks
  • Panic: endless procedurally generated rooms with rising hazard pressure
  • Time Trial: race the Adventure rooms with a best-time record per room

Technology Stack

  • C with GBDK-2020 targeting the DMG (Game Boy) CPU
  • Vite + gameboy-emulator for the browser runner
  • Node’s built-in node:test for ROM and web-module smoke tests
  • SRAM for save data (Adventure unlocks, best times, Panic best depth)

How It Works

src-rom/main.c is the full game: gameplay, level generation, menus, 4-channel music, and rendering. make compiles it to dist/pogo-panic.gb and copies the ROM into public/roms/ so the browser shell can fetch it. The web side is strictly host code: emulator boot, input mapping, SRAM persistence, and a level debug viewer that consumes JSON dumped from the C source. The constraint that everything must run on a real DMG keeps scope honest: 160×144 screen, 4-color palette, fixed-tick bounce physics.