Vermilion Hearts is a short, experimental 2D role-playing game created entirely in a custom C-based engine, built from the ground up for Game Boy Advance hardware and emulators. I designed and implemented every element of the game, from its collision map-altering abilities to a full conversation system. I leveraged Direct Memory Access to create parallax backgrounds, authentic glitch effects, scrambled palettes, and dynamic sound effects. Hardware interrupts drive player input and interaction mode changes.
As the battery in the game’s cartridge begins to corrode and die, what was once a traditional fantasy world begins to erode into something more scattered and sinister. Characters become aware of their artificiality, the royal court desperately searches for a solution, the streets of the kingdom fall away into garbled static. I designed and implemented a sprite stealing mechanic that enables the player to take the form of any character, and use their unique abilities to solve puzzles. Some characters enable new conversation options, while others can directly alter the appearance and traversable space of the world by changing the way collision maps are read.
Because the game portrays a deteriorating digital world, I placed a huge emphasis on designing and implementing authentic glitch effects and mechanics. Audio sample arrays are injected with random data to simulate decay, printed characters have a small chance to point to other areas in memory, and backgrounds contrast hand-crafted pixel art with flickering DMA swaps.
Date: Fall 2021
All art, programming, design and writing by: Benjamin Lock