Expertly melding RPG elements with rhythm battle mechanics, Chantey puts you in the boots of a novice pirate and ships you off on an adventure to find lost treasure. The premise (metal pirate rhythm-game RPG just rolls off the tongue, doesn’t it?) is wild, and the execution feels like a master class in bending genre expectations. Chantey’s developer, K.C. Gortyn Code, took some time to answer our questions about the game and his experience releasing it.
Chantey’s pirate metal theme is core to its story.
GB Studio Central: Where did the idea for Chantey come from?
K.C. Gortyn Code: The idea that eventually morphed into Chantey came to me very early. I used to play a lot of D&D and was always fascinated by the Bard class, a character that influenced the outcome of a battle by playing enchanted music.
Being a heavy metal fan, I could see the genre fitting perfectly in the premise for a game, where you channel the power of heavy metal to fight enemies. The idea went through several iterations, but it wasn’t until I was introduced to pirate metal, particularly Alestorm’s story-driven songs and lyrics, that the whole pirate aesthetic clicked. When I found out about GB Studio and that people had been building new Game Boy games with it, I was sold. I knew I wanted to do the game for the Game Boy – not just for the sake of nostalgia, I was sure the Game Boy would be the perfect hardware to host this genre of music.
GBSC: Pirate games can be filled with clichés, but Chantey feels more authentic even in its absurd premise. Were there any tropes you specifically wanted to avoid or concepts you wanted to make sure were included in the game?
K.C.GC: I was (and still am) big into pirates and pirate lore in general. I’m also big into history. Doing a game about the Caribbean and the golden age of piracy meant doing a lot of research: what the world was like back then, how pirates were perceived & treated and what big events were brewing or took place around that time. Then you have to think about how to combine that with the game’s absurd premise.
The idea was to blend high fantasy with historical authenticity, so that players would both recognize and be sucked into the game’s world. All the characters you meet and interact with kind of live inside their own little feudal world; their story feels like just one of many that could take place in such a world. A lot of work went into crafting the game’s lore. What transpires in this world can feel like a real pirate legend in itself, and you become part of that legend.
Of course, many influences on the pirates’ portrayal came from Alestorm, games like Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag and films like the Pirates of the Caribbean series, but I wanted to make sure the game maintained its own identity.
GBSC: The game opens up pretty quickly, allowing for lots of exploration. Why go that route instead of a more linear RPG approach?
K.C.GC: I wanted to let players experience freedom early on. There’s no hand-holding. I am aware that this has been a point of criticism for Chantey. Some reviewers have pointed out feeling lost and said they would have appreciated more straightforward tips. This is where I think Chantey truly builds its appeal for players with the patience to invest in its world. Sometimes, you must combine information coming from different sources to figure out where you need to be or what to do. In Chantey, information is the most valuable form of currency.
By making the player “work” at this early stage of the game, they slowly uncover and come to know the game’s world, just as their in-game character would. Story and gameplay thus become tightly intertwined. You are meant to feel lost and helpless in the beginning and feel like a true pirate worth their salt by the time the story picks up the pace. Hence, you feel that confidence comes as a natural part of your journey, and a reward for all the time you spent exploring and learning earlier in the game.
I also think this plays into the world’s authenticity. Sometimes the hero just happens to be at the wrong place – and that’s okay. In Chantey, some players might even take the opportunity to make some quick money while spending time in the wrong place, doing some courier missions while figuring out where they’re actually supposed to be. That opportunistic approach to playing the game is what I think makes Chantey feel like an authentic pirate game. It’s what I’d imagine real pirates would do if put in a similar situation.
GBSC: The map of the game is based on a real map of the world, forcing the player to look up real-world locations at one point. What led you to include this in the game?
K.C.GC: I’m a big geography nerd, so doing a real map of the Caribbean for Chantey felt like a no-brainer for the setting and theme. In terms of game design, I am also a big fan of games and media that break the fourth wall, forcing the player to think beyond the boundaries of the game world. The most prominent examples would be Metal Gear Solid (the Psycho Mantis fight), or StarTropics, where players would have to dip a letter, included in the game box, in water, to reveal a secret code. I personally enjoy finding locations on a map, especially when I’m watching a movie or playing a game taking place in a real-world location, to get a sense of where the characters are. I figured many players would enjoy figuring out this puzzle as well.
This is also meant to clue players in that there are other locations in the game where they can disembark in a similar fashion, adding mystery and a sense of discovery for those who try to find them all.
GBSC: Was there a specific reason for making it a DMG game and not in color?
K.C.GC: Growing up, my sister had a DMG-01. For the longest time, this was the only video game system I had access to. I later got a Game Boy Pocket, which I still own (and still works). I decided to make Chantey for the DMG, mostly because that’s the system I feel most nostalgic for. I never owned a GBC, nor did any of my friends, and I instead jumped straight from the Game Boy Pocket to the GBA. Despite knowing for a long time throughout development that the Chromatic was essentially a GBC, I still made Chantey for the DMG because I wanted to make something that would work on the childhood system I still own. When I realized rhythm gameplay hadn’t really been done on DMG prior to Chantey (to the best of my knowledge, at least), it just made the DMG that much more compelling for me to work on.
GBSC: What technical challenges did you face making it?
K.C.GC: The easy answer would be exactly what I mentioned above: not having a blueprint or template for the note-matching gameplay sections on the DMG limitations. I spent a lot of time trying to figure out how to make the rhythm parts work using what GBStudio 3 (eventually, 3.1) offered. Figuring out how to fit the number of actors, projectiles, tile swaps needed to achieve the visual look, whilst catering for music tracks that could go on for five or even six minutes, all that without triggering a kernel panic – it was quite a challenge.
I would say the game’s open-world design also caused a lot of headaches during QA testing. When you have 11 different locations that can be visited in any order, it creates a QA nightmare, since there are 11! (over 39 million) possible visitation orders to test. The small QA team assembled did an amazing job, though, and only a handful of issues have been reported since launch. Even more luckily, the ModRetro team introduced the Chromatic Cart Clinic, an awesome, game-changing feature that lets developers patch up any issues that players may encounter and report while the game is out in the wild. These teams deserve a lot of credit for their contributions to Chantey.
GBSC: We were very excited to see the game included as part of The Indie Game Awards Vanguard, but it was rescinded shortly after due to ModRetro announcing an Anduril Chromatic. What are your thoughts on the situation?
K.C.GC: It was a messy situation for sure. I received news of Chantey’s selection for the award about 40 days before the awards ceremony was set to premiere, during which time, we exchanged several emails. At the time, it felt great. Not just as a personal honor, but as a way to represent the GB homebrew scene in a show where many awesome indie games were shown off. If you look at the quality of some homebrew titles over the last couple of years, titles like Dragonyhm, or Self Simulated – these aren’t just great “homebrews.” These are great games, period. In the acceptance speech I was asked to record for the show, I took the opportunity to shout out all homebrew game devs and the people who made GB Studio possible, so aspiring devs like myself can make our dream games with it. It felt like a chance to make more people aware of the homebrew scene as a whole outside of this so-called “niche,” in hopes that more devs would believe that these titles can be legitimately considered among the finest in any given year.
And then it was all taken away.
What made things worse for me was the way the organizers handled it. Whatever they claimed their issue with ModRetro being the game’s publisher was, it was clear this was not something they believed in before the ceremony, as the game was announced as a ModRetro Chromatic title during Gamescom 2024. I even thanked the ModRetro team in my acceptance video, which the IGA’s director saw well before the show aired. He told me he absolutely loved the shout-out to GB Studio and ModRetro after reviewing it. The Anduril Chromatic was announced a few days before the ceremony, and I can only assume the optics changed after the show aired. I believe it could have been handled better. I believe the awards (including the ones retracted from E33) should not have been rescinded. They could have opted to discuss with me that they didn’t want to include me in whatever plans they had for the Vanguards moving forward, in terms of exposure and business connections. We could have found a way to part ways politely, given that their stance toward the game had changed.
Here’s where I have to give huge props to ModRetro, especially to Torin and Palmer. Keep in mind, it was I who submitted the game for awards consideration at the IGAs, and it would be totally fair if ModRetro distanced themselves from the whole debacle and let me face the consequences of this decision alone. They were extremely supportive throughout this whole affair, and we even came up with a way to turn this bad situation into something good, by giving people the opportunity to get the game and support charity during the follow-up of my statement-response to the IGAs. This is what me and other game devs publishing through ModRetro get to see — the part of the partnership that doesn’t get advertised as much. In an industry dealing with uncertainty, a publisher that actually values its partners and treats them with fairness and respect is a massive breath of fresh air.
GBSC: Anything else you’d like to add?
K.C.GC: First and foremost, thank you for hosting me and for the opportunity to answer these questions! Since this speech has since been erased from the IGAs video, I’d like to take this opportunity to reiterate the following:
“Being here would not have been possible without the enormous support of my wife and my kids, my family, and everyone who helped me push forward in releasing such a weird, experimental, and kind of head-scratching title in 2025 […]. A huge thank you goes out to the folks at ModRetro, for making the physical release of Chantey possible, and everyone in the Game Boy homebrew community – developers, players and the makers of GB Studio, who I feel I am sharing this honor with. Time may have left these beloved old systems behind, but they still have so much more to give. From inspiring new generations of developers through the 80s and 90s classics to offering a genuine ecosystem for developers and players to craft new experiences, and push innovation forward […]. They [these devs] are and will always be the ones looking back into what first inspired them to become creators, tasking themselves to remind us why we love games, and what makes us all fall in love with them, time and again. Whatever the future might hold, I can rest assured that the industry is in the best of hands”.
Chantey is available to purchase from ModRetro. You can find out more about the game on it’s official website and check out the demo on Itch. You can also follow K.C. Gortyn Code on X.
Audio Engineer, Mac Technologist and Video Game Developer. Managing Editor of GBStudio Central. (he/him)
