Five years of work: Bob's Game

by Eric Caoili { Aug 11th 2008 at 8:00PM }

What drove Robert Pelloni to spend over five years creating a Nintendo DS game by himself? The same thing that motivates most homebrew programmers: "It's the game I wanted to play when I was younger, a vision I've been following since then."

The video above isn't a proper representation of his 20-hour-long adventure game, as it's only a technical demo of its assets and features (in fact, you would be better off watching the annotated version at the clip's Youtube page), but Robert reassures us that the finished product will be like an RPG, except focusing on "story, puzzles, items, and communication instead of repetitive battles with palette-swapped enemies."

The project, tentatively titled Bob's Game, doesn't have the high production values of big-budget titles backed by major or even minor dev teams, but the code, sprites, music, tiles, and everything else are all original, making for a very unique game. Who knows, it could be the next Cave Story! Robert is currently seeking a publisher for the project.

See also: Japanese homebrew games that will blow your mind

Tags: 2d, adventure, bobs-game, robert-pelloni

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

Kenneth Caldwell @ Aug 11th 2008 8:23PM

I'd love to see some game interaction. Or even a good description of the game. There's not much to read about on the game's home page other than how long it took to make it, which is impressive, though it doesn't necessarily guarantee a good product. Sounds great, though.

Anonymous @ Aug 18th 2008 9:36AM

"A bad game is bad forever; A delayed game is eventually good"- Shigeru Miyamoto

Ashley @ Aug 11th 2008 8:40PM

I hope this gets off the ground. But if it doesn't, it's just one in a long stream of doomed indie titles ...

chibi_wings @ Aug 11th 2008 10:14PM

it looks good, I hope he can find a publisher. An RPG-Adventure game, my two favourite genres!! yuppie!

David D. @ Aug 11th 2008 10:39PM

Too bad that Dokustu GBA porting effort went South. It was running really well!

chaindrop @ Aug 12th 2008 12:23AM

nice music...

elend @ Aug 12th 2008 4:05AM

Hey doesn't look too bad! Oh and about that Cave Story: Is the DS port still being worked on? I'd love to finally play it again on the DS.

Microx @ Aug 12th 2008 10:12AM

This sort of reminds me of Brave Fencer Musashi, where there are events that only trigger at certain times and days. The camera seems a little awkward though.

papa462amr @ Aug 12th 2008 12:53PM

Bob's game recipe: 2 NES controllers, 1 giant heart container and quite possibly a piece of the triforce... it got that old-school Nintendo feel like Pokemon or Earthbound ... I love it and cant wait!.... reminds me of growing up with nintendo... "here son... play this... "