Started work on the title and game start menus. Mundane stuff but necessary! The first story is also slowly taking shape w/ new maps and new characters. Can't wait to share more! #nes #jrpg #thebookofrynn #indiegames #gamedev #retrogames

Bar a few bug fixes, the Book of Rynn is now feature complete. The road to the demo: story writing, maps, sprites, scripting, music, sfx and none of it will be revealed until it's ready so I may post less until then. Join us on Discord to try it first! #gamedev #jrpg #nes #retrogames #indiegames

Our battle system is very close to complete. We *need* testers able to try any and all commands, spells, items and break the game so we can find and fix every single issue. If you love RPGs from the 8-bit era, we need your help! #jrpg #nes #gamedev #indiegames #retrogames #the-book-of-rynn

Battle spells are finished and battle items are on the way. I started working on this game about a year ago and we are finally almost feature complete, ready to enter the content phase and start working on the public demo, which will feature the entire first story. The excitement is unreal!

Battle spells are coming along! Also implemented critical hits, pre-emptive strikes, parry, evade and many other battle mechanics. Do you wanna try the game while we're building it? Join us on Discord! #jrpg #nes #retrogames #gamedev #indiegames

I recently lost my map editor after wiping my main drive in a hurry. The previous editor was heavy and Python+QT based so not very portable. I redid it in Typescript+Vite and now it runs in the browser! It's much less clunky and loads the same .chr and .pal files as the game uses, which is neat!

Enjoying the grind! #jrpg #nes #retrogames #nesdev

Our first battle dev build is out! If you want to help test The Book of Rynn and fight Sillygoos and grind your way to fighting the stronger Goofygoos, join us on our Discord! Link in bio :) #jrpg #thebookofrynn #nesdev #nes #indiegames #retrogames #gamedev

I've been wanting to setup this Nintendo nostalgia tower for a while and it's now complete! Wii is in the living room 😎 #radical #nes #nintendo #retrogames

Preliminary XP curves for all archetypes. The game will have a hard level cap of 30 but each story will be completable around a lvl 20 soft cap. Looking forward to the balancing headaches! Join us on Discord, we'll need people to test the grind soon! #nesdev #indiegames #gamedev #retrogames #jrpg

The work on our battle loop continues! Added a turn order calculation based on actors dexterity and a random % variation as well as a simple attack evade calculation based on the dexterity gap between the attacker and defender. Devil's in the details, as they say! #jrpg #nesdev #indiegames #gamedev

Hope y'all are having a nice New Years Eve! We're ending 2025 closer than ever to The Book of Rynn finally becoming a reality and I couldn't be happier to share this with you all. Happy New Year everyone, stay warm and safe, and here's to releasing The Book of Rynn in 2026! 🥳

That GBC game I developed in about a week and released exactly a year ago, Santa Rush, is gonna be played on a live stream by @johndogb.bsky.social today (French stream) - can't wait to see him rage at the horrible jump physics! 😅

Merry Christmas everyone! 🎅Our battle loop is functional although only the FIGHT command works for now. Next up: spells, items, parry and run! I'm getting very close to entering the content phase and working on the demo story. I'm *really* excited! #nes #jrpg #indiegames #retrogrames #gamedev

Hi! I was really hoping for a demo by the end of this year but I hit a few too many snags! A demo is absolutely coming early 2026, however. Until then, Happy Holidays, enjoy your friends and families and this NES-style Santa! See you all very soon!🎅🎄

After a whole month of fixing nasty issues and redoing systems, I'm glad to share that I am finally back to working on BATTLES! Say hi to the SILLYGOO! Name one JRPG that doesn't have a slime monster, I dare you! #nesdev #jrpg #indiegames #gamedev #retrogames

1/2 Nerd speak alert! Working with such limited resources as with the NES forces you to be creative. Collisions used to loop through: collidable tiles, trigger tiles and NPCs: 3 whole loops before we even started moving, and if an NPC had decided to start moving that same frame, that was doubled!

Hi! Been a hot minute! Rewrote the entire npc and sprite update routines and finally got rid of that nasty 1 frame stutter bug. I'm also back to working on the game full time at least until January! Let's go!! #jrpg #nes #gamedev #indiegames #retrogames

My little brother got me this out of the blue! Had a lot of fun building it! Also reminded me I need a shelf for my gameboys 🤦‍♂️

Happy Sunday! I started with refactoring NPCs and ended up refactoring the whole sprite update system as well and it somehow broke the day-night cycle. I think I have some housekeeping to do! Thanks for bearing with me! 😅 #nesdev #jrpg #retrogames #indiegames #gamedev

Hello! I've been busy rewriting the entire npc management system. Will be back with regular updates shortly 😎

Ok I need to come clean, I haven't been posting updates on #the-book-of-rynn as much in the past week because I've been taking a little break and toying with #nintendo64 programming and I've been having so much fun! I'm putting this down and going back to #nesdev right away but I'll be back!😅

Woke up to one of our playtesters reporting a 1-frame hitch on vertical scrolling. Started digging and ended up scrapping the code for NPC movement and sprite updates completely and starting from scratch. For one annoying frame. #gamedev is hard 😅

Haha ok this is fun. I'm going to dive more into the N64 when The Book of Rynn is done! #n64brew #homebrew #nintendo64

Just taking a little break tonight to try something a bit different 😎

We now have Scribe revives working + real time sprites swap with Mr Skelly (I mistakenly called him Mr Spooky a few days ago! I'm sorry Mr Skelly!) when characters die/get revived. ☠️ Also, poison swamps are back. With Steve, as always, as our test subject. #gamedev #retrogames #jrpg #indiegames

Here's the functioning inn system. Scribes can also save games now but I'm not done with them as they also need to revive and remove poison. I got a linker surprise this morning and had to move all string literals to their own dedicated bank. 😅 #nesdev #indiegames #gamedev #jrpg

Hope y'all had a great Halloween night! I spent mine in Arc Raiders 🤭 and I'm ending it by introducing you to Mr Spooky. Mr Spooky comes when someone has 0 HP left! Hi Mr Spooky! 💀👻 #thebookofrynn #jrpg #nesdev #nes #retrogrames

The Book of Rynn now has functional shops! Do you want to try them out and help shape the game? Join us on Discord! I just posted a new dev rom! #nesdev #jrpg #thebookofrynn #retrogames #indiegames #gamedev

Happy #dragonquest release day! You have no idea how much how I want to dive into this but for the sake of bringing this project to completion, I'll put it off for when I'm done!

The shop system is coming along but I took a little detour to integrate up to 4 party member sprites because the more the merrier! #jrpg #nesdev #thebookofrynn #indiegames #gamedev #retrogames

Fellow devs, how do you spread the word about your games to communities you *know* will be interested in them, respectfully and without being spammy? #indiegames #gamedev #nesdev #retrogames

Back when this was a Gameboy Color game, I made this lore intro. Can't wait to build on this and start writing stories to share with you all. My head is filled to the brim with ideas!

I love how this is slowly becoming a full game! We now have the framework for simple quests! Here's an example where our hero goes out to fetch the Red Orb for this villager! #nesdev #jrpg #thebookofrynn

Taking a short break from programming to try and see why my SNES isn't receiving input from my controllers 🤔

I wasn't meant to work on these just yet but we now have roaming NPCs. Our little town is starting to feel more alive! Next up: make them talk! #jrpg #nesdev #thebookofrynn

We now have persistent searchables! Maps are kept in read-only memory so searchable tiles have to be checked in real time whether they have been found or not and show the right chest (closed or open) tile. #nesdev #jrpg #thebookofrynn

Breakout with Kaiju? Yes please!

The NES launched in NA this day, 40 yrs ago. I got mine for my 7th bday in 1987. I remember coming back from school and seeing the big box, gift wrapped, on the kitchen table and later setting it up with my dad. One of my fondest childhood memories and my most prized possession. Happy bday, NES. 🥳

I absolutely love that other people are working on NES rpgs! Let's gooo!

Made the map layer transition better. Here's what it looks like in dungeons! Each section is a "layer" stored as a standalone map. The transition happens in 2 phases: flood-fill of an area of interest, then spiral fill for the rest of the screen. #nesdev #jrpg #thebookofrynn

Caves are now in-game, with spooky music to boot! 👻#thebookofrynn #nesdev #jrpg

I now have a (mostly automated) procedure to add new maps and can now teleport in and out of locations easily, switching graphics and music. I'll share a new dev build after I've added a few more maps so you can explore some! Join our Discord if you wanna try it out! discord.gg/s9c3g4XaTC

Ngl this was a giant PITA but we now have a map layer system with progressive flood-fill reveal. The only thing I'm not happy with is that it's 25% slower than I wanted, mainly because of the way the VRAM buffer is handled by the library. I'll eventually replace said library but for now, it'll do.

My gf got me clear NES shells for my birthdat! There's also a purple one I'm going to use to build an OpenTendo! 🥳

Apologies for the radio silence! Bill-paying work has reared its ugly head. Progress reports on The Book of Rynn will be back shortly!

Omg, this is so fun. I need to slam this on a cart and get someone to play it with!

First look at towns in The Book of Rynn! Tileset is WIP but it's coming along great! Can't wait to see this populated with NPCs! #nesdev #jrpg #thebookofrynn #indiegames #retro #8bit

The Book of Rynn would not be complete without poison swamps! RIP Steve. ⚰️ #jrpg #nes #retrogaming #indiegames

We need people to test dev roms and make sure my shoddy programming doesn't break. The only requirements are that: - you can run an NES emulator - you've played (and loved!) the NES Dragon Warrior games - you can spend some time with the test builds and report back on your experience Send DM!