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Christmas Carols
Saved games stay in this browser only.
About the game
Christmas Carols is a rhythm game for the original Game Boy. Little Christmas icons slide along a staff: Santa heads, wrapped presents, round baubles and more. Each icon stands for one button on the Game Boy, and you press that button at the right moment, in time with the music. The tune goes on while you try to keep up with it.
You choose a difficulty at the start. Easy, Medium and Hard differ in how many different icons the song uses, so on Easy you have only a few buttons to watch and on Hard there are more of them to follow. When the song ends the game shows your score and tells you if you have set a new high score.
The game was made in 2020 by invertedHat (Jan Klečka) with GB Studio, Aseprite, MilkyTracker and Tiled for the GB Studio Christmas Bash game jam. The author notes that the idea pushes the limits of the engine, and the timing is strict, so give it a few tries to learn which icon goes with which button.
Playing it here
This is a homebrew game made for the original Game Boy: a new game by an independent developer, not a commercial release. It runs here in binjgb, a Game Boy emulator compiled to WebAssembly. Click Play now, click the game once so the page has the keyboard, and press Enter on the title screen.
Your high scores are kept in this browser, in the cartridge's save memory. F2 saves the current state of the emulator and F4 brings it back. A gamepad also works.
Controls
| Key | Game Boy button | Action |
|---|---|---|
| Arrow keys | Control Pad | the direction icons; choose the difficulty |
| X | A | the A icon; confirm |
| Z | B | the B icon |
| Enter | Start | start from the title screen |
| F2 / F4 | — | save / load the emulator state |
A few things worth knowing
Start on Easy. It uses fewer icons, so you can learn how each one maps to a button before the song asks for all of them.
Follow the beat, not the screen. The icons arrive in time with the music, so it helps to tap along to the rhythm rather than to wait for each icon to land.
Practice with the emulator state. F2 saves just before a hard part and F4 brings it back, so you can try it again without playing the whole song.
Frequently asked questions
Is my high score saved? Yes, in this browser, in the cartridge's save memory. Clearing the site data in your browser deletes it.
Does it work on a phone? The page shows on-screen buttons on touch screens, but a rhythm game is easier with a keyboard or a gamepad.
Is it free? Yes. The code is MIT licensed and the assets are under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0.
Credits and licence
Christmas Carols was made by invertedHat (Jan Klečka), who also made Dusky Dungeon. The code is under the MIT licence and the art and the music under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 (credit: invertedHat, Jan Klečka, itch.io/invertedhat); nothing was changed. The ROM served here is the one the author publishes on itch.io. It runs here in binjgb (MIT licence). The licence texts are linked from this page.