View this app on Heroku at http://gameboy-opus.herokuapp.com/

When I was younger, I owned a Nintendo GameBoy, which I carried around with me pretty much everywhere. I had a handful of games for the thing, each one nerdier than the last. Chessmaster was a favorite, as was Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, several of the Final Fantasy Legend titles, and a weird game called Daedalian Opus.

Daedalian Opus was a gift from my parents for a birthday or holiday somewhere along the way, and I'm pretty sure I was initially bummed to receive it. I had never heard of it and certainly hadn't requested it. (This makes younger me sound like a little shit. I'm sure I still managed to express my gratitude for the gift.) I tried it out anyway, and found it to be a really fun and challenging puzzle game; one that has been largely forgotten about by games enthusiasts but has nonetheless stuck with me all these years.

And so I decided to try my hand at recreating it. Partly because I thought it could be a cool portfolio piece and partly because I just wanted to see if it was still as fun as I remember.

Turns out it totally is. Please feel free to try it out yourself!

I don't fancy myself much of a designer, but it seemed clear that the best way to honor the original game would be to present it with a backdrop that resembled the original GameBoy portable gaming system. For the uninitiated, the GameBoy was a gloriously ugly gaming device. Its garish monochrome screen was the color of split-pea soup, decked with quintessentially '90s pink and purple stipes and the message–as if proudly advertising–"DOT MATRIX WITH STEREO SOUND". I regret being unable to capture the physical weight or blocky feel of the original, both of which made it feel like one was playing video games on a cinder block.

All that to say, I miss the damn thing and hope I've done it some justice.

This is high on my wish list, but this app is currently about as hostile to mobile devices as possible. Users should be able to log in, but since manipulating the game blocks requires keyboard input, they won't be able to do much of anything once they begin a level.

To date, I've coded 8 levels into the playable game. The original game had considerably more (and more difficult) puzzles. Check back occasionally for more, and send me a shout if you'd like to be notified when levels are added.

All the best,
Dan Apczynski