The homebrew scene is of vital importance to the small world of retrogaming. It brings together passionate independent developers who create original games for retro consoles, often long after their commercial lifecycle has ended.

Thanks to their creativity and technical expertise, these enthusiasts breathe new life into our favorite machines, with brand-new titles often impressively high in quality. Today, we’re focusing on one of them, alx5962, for two reasons: first, he’s developing Mokhey, a Game Boy Color game; and second, he’s a Recalbox user. 😉

We had a chance to chat on our Discord, the perfect opportunity for a Q&A to learn more about him and his project, Mokhey:

Can you tell us about the game in a few words?

It’s a game for the Game Boy Color. It tells the story of a young monkey captured by poachers who wants to return to his adoptive family. So it’s a fairly narrative-driven game, but it also features action and puzzle scenes. You could call it a cinematic platformer/adventure, with a 90s-style gameplay. There are many hidden references throughout the game, so I hope some players take the time to find them. My game is available in both French and English, as I know many people prefer to play in their native language. That was actually quite tricky to implement!

The game also supports the Game Boy Printer (not many games have this feature, unfortunately), and I thought it was a cool way to stand out from other indie Game Boy titles.

How did you end up developing for the Game Boy Color, and why that platform?

It’s been a teenage dream of mine to create a game, but I didn’t have the skills back then. In early 2023, I finally felt ready and wanted to try developing for a low-powered console, since it requires fewer resources (especially graphically), making a quick prototype more realistic. I’ve also been doing pixel art for a long time, so the Game Boy seemed like an ideal choice. I started with GBDK (a Game Boy SDK), but later I read an article about the developer JohnDo, who made a Game Boy game about Dijon, which led me to discover GB Studio. I continued working on my game using that tool.

Did you develop it all by yourself?

Yes, I did everything myself: the story, graphics, code, music, the box—and I even flashed the Game Boy cartridges. I learned to do that during COVID thanks to an open-source project: the Sanni CartReader. My first test with a basic sprite and screen was in January 2023. I’ve spent countless evenings and weekends on it over the past two years. Most of the time, I was coding while watching Recalbox or Hyperion streams 😅

What was the biggest challenge?

Music, clearly! I’m used to MIDI setups or direct-input instruments, so I had to relearn everything. The Game Boy is super limited musically: four audio channels with only square or triangular waveforms… So I had to program every note and every effect! In the end, I composed 15 tracks, though not all of them made it into the final game. GB Studio is a great tool with frequent updates, but sadly there aren’t many tutorials available.

Mokhey is partly inspired by Mother 3. What other games influenced you?

The initial idea was to tell the story of Salsa, the monkey from Mother 3, who’s mistreated by his master. I wanted to give him an origin story. But later, I decided to write an original tale. My first major inspiration was Toby Fox, who started by modding the Mother series and later created Undertale and Deltarune. I’m a big fan of The Legend of Zelda, but there are already so many fan games inspired by Link’s Awakening that I wanted to do anything but a Zelda-like.

Have you tested the game on Recalbox?

Yes, of course. Several people even finished the demo on it. It’s also tested on real hardware—I have a flash cart on my Game Boy Color, which also has an AMOLED screen, great for graphics! I even showed the demo to the Recalbox team last year during the Avion meetup.

Any other projects in the works?

I’d love to remake all the game’s music in piano and lo-fi versions at some point. I’ve also been learning Unreal Engine 5 recently, but I don’t plan to make a full game with it just yet.

Big thanks to alx5962 for taking the time to answer our questions!
To follow his work, you can check out:

• His itch.io: https://alx5962.itch.io/
• His Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/alx5962.bsky.social

And if you’d like to support his work, you can buy Mokhey on https://mohkey.com/. Note: all collector’s editions are already sold out, but the standard edition is available for €30 (shipping included). Only about 30 physical copies remain, and there won’t be a second print run.

And who knows—maybe Mokhey will come preinstalled on your Recalbox in a few months… 😉