Chirping on Trust

A game for the Game Boy Advance, made over one weekend in a team of three (Team 5) at the MEKO Jam on media literacy by IF(game)SH e.V. in Leck. Our goal was a ROM that runs on the real handheld. At first we weren’t sure we would get anything running at all, but it worked. I made the pixel art, set up the web emulator and designed the itch.io page, where the game can be played in the browser.

Team: Gracl & Zoltankost.

Type: Game
Year: 2026
Details: Game jam, group project, released

Chirping on Trust running on a Game Boy Advance SP

01 — Fact sheet

Role: Team of three: pixel art, web emulator and the itch.io page
Time frame: One weekend, 2026
Tools: Rust
agb
Aseprite
mGBA (web version)
Hardware: Game Boy Advance SP
Flash cartridge with microSD card (Superchis)
Links: Play on itch.io
All games of the jam
Devlog: the game jam weekend

02 — Setting

The MEKO Jam on media literacy, organised by IF(game)SH e.V. in Leck – this year it replaced the Summer Game Jam: around 30 participants, German and Danish developers together. Friday started with a workshop on topics of media literacy, effects of media, and gender and identity, plus three short talks.

After the team-building, my two teammates and I agreed on a topic: a game for the Game Boy Advance that actually runs as a ROM on the real handheld.

Work table at the game jam with laptops, snacks and paper prototypes — Work table at the jam

03 — Concept

The tech was settled quickly, but the game design wasn’t clicking on the first evening. On Saturday we decided to recreate the game Temple of Terror. Not the most creative choice, but we needed something to work on, and the technical side was demanding enough for the short time frame.

Only on the home stretch did we notice: none of us had ever played the original. We had built it the way we imagined it, so our game still turned out different from the source, a happy accident.

04 — Implementation

We wrote the game in Rust with the agb library. It let us load Aseprite files directly, without exporting them first, which saved us a step in the graphics pipeline. The game logic and the hardware side were in my teammates’ hands.

Pixel art: roughly 30 sprites with a rough, shared colour palette. Every sprite had to use one of the sizes the hardware supports, 16 × 16, 32 × 32, 64 × 64 px and so on.
Web emulator: so the game can be played in the browser without a Game Boy, the itch.io page runs the ROM in the web version of the emulator mGBA.

Pixel-art title screen of Chirping on Trust with birds and the menu items “Select Players” and “Start Game” — The title screen

05 — Result

At the end we compiled a ROM, loaded it onto a flash cartridge via microSD card and tested it on a Game Boy Advance SP. All the other teams also finished with a playable version. Chirping on Trust can be played in the browser on itch.io, and the ROM can be downloaded there.

06 — What I learned and would do differently

Test more, earlier: run real playtests much sooner. In such a short time frame that is often hard to fit in, but an earlier test round would have given us more room to find and fix problems.
Settle on an idea early: the first evening went by without a fixed game design. Once we had a fixed starting point on Saturday, the work moved fast. At the next jam I would commit to a simple idea on Friday and adjust it later.
Feedback for interactions: next time I would spend more time on how the game reacts to input – more feedback through sounds, small animations and hints, so every action is clear and easy for the player to follow.