The Janayana (Classic)

The Janayana Classic [demo]

Started in December 2019 when my brother sent me a link to GBStudio and I was looking for a coding project to help improve my coding skills, The Janayana began to pour out of me. Taking place in a vast game world across multiple incarnations, the game is deeply infused with years of research into world mythology to place the game in a universal past when dragons and demons and gods roamed free along with the myriad beings.

After 10 months of daily coding sprints building out the game world (hundreds of scenes, a handful of towns/cities, underworld, spirit world, epic quests, several incarnations), I decided to polish the combat system for the game -- which resulted in my first GameBoy title, Dragon Battle (link).

I'm releasing this demo version of The Janayana online here for anyone interested in digging into a narrative-heavy RPG game world with a redesigned experience point & level up system built on failure and numerous other innovations. My brother and I have been complaining for years about limitations of the JRPG genre and how we would design more robust game worlds that are focussed on narrative and solving puzzles and engaging with the game world instead of just endless combat.

Here's the OpenGameArt page with all graphics & references to artwork used, including lots and lots of hand-drawn pixelated sprites (link). Hopefully this artwork is helpful to other indie game devs out there who need some sprites for the GameBoy palette as they develop their own games!

No sound because this is an early-stage demo. Yes, there are plans for future development/completion of this game. Current dev focus is on Dragon Battle release, and building an expanded action-RPG version of The Janayana in Godot. Anticipate a few years before I could seriously dig into The Janayana again. Completing Dragon Battle is key for build-out of The Janayana game world.

For now, I hope you enjoy playing through the childhoods of the poor forest boy and royal princess!