Old School Gamer Magazine chats with Gumball in Treat-Or-Treat Land developer Adam Lewis Graf, who details the retro adventure game and more
About Gumball in Trick-Or-Treat Land:
Prepare to chew your way through an irresistible 8-bit adventure in a charming tribute to the Game Boy Color era. Retro-focused publisher Mega Cat Studios and Exquisite Laundry Pet are excited to announce that Gumball in Trick-Or-Treat Land will be released digitally on Steam and physically for the Game Boy Color in 2026.
Developed by indie game developer Adam Lewis Graf, Gumball in Trick-Or-Treat Land is an old-school RPG inspired by Earthbound, Undertale, and the classic Game Boy Color adventures of the late 90s. Guide an intrepid Gumball through a quirky Halloween-themed world, meet colorful companions, brew potions, solve puzzles, and face a menagerie of menacing munchies and temperamental treats in strategic, turn-based battles.
Old School Gamer Magazine: How was this game born?
Adam Lewis Graf: Gumball in Trick-or-Treat Land started as an experimental swing at a much less ambitious concept. I always wanted to make something in the Game Boy Color style, but I couldn’t quite get the feel right until GB Studio was enhanced to support color. Once that happened, I knew that I wanted to make an investment in learning the tool, and the game evolved very slowly from there.
Old School Gamer Magazine: What is your role in the game?
Graf: I work mostly alone – which means I’m the designer, developer, artist, composer, and project manager, et cetera. I made it by myself, basically. The box art and title screen were done by my good friend Dan Fransee, but everything else you see in the game was created by me.
Old School Gamer Magazine: What has development been like?
Graf: It was very very iterative. I spent about two years experimenting to just learn the toolset and then about 15 months of devoted development once I had settled in on what the concept would be. I was still learning the particular quirks of developing for the Game Boy throughout the process and becoming better at pixel art, which I had the least experience in, so the later phases involved a lot of enhancing or replacing the current assets.
I also playtest things pretty extensively myself before getting outside opinions, so there was a lot of playing through a segment of the game and feeling like it didn’t quite work and going back to change some design element. For example, there was originally a subplot that involved a kidnapping that was just tonally too dark to feel like it fit, so I redesigned a couple of characters and reworded the dialogue, and now it’s one of my favorite moments of the game. That same thing happened at least once in every area of the game, I think.
Old School Gamer Magazine: What makes this game special?
Graf: Well the short answer is it’s incredibly silly and stupid.
The longer answer is: this is made to spec for the Game Boy Color, which means it adheres to the technical constraints of the original hardware. My goal was for this design to feel like something you could actually stumble across in 1998 or so, so it’s a period piece in a way. The name “Gumball in Trick-or-Treat Land” comes from the convention of “Land” being in the title of Game Boy games (Mario Land, Wario Land, Nightmare in Dream Land).
Modern Game Boy/Game Boy Color games are increasing in number and popularity, and I think that’s a good thing! I think Gumball may stand out because all of the assets are made from scratch, and it’s a design that doesn’t take itself too seriously. It’s an 8-hour long campaign that’s meant to be played at a relaxed pace, and it emphasizes exploration and interaction with a bunch of weird little guys. I also think it’s challenging but not overly complex, and that to me is a comfy place for a design like this to be.
Old School Gamer Magazine: What games influenced this one the most?
Graf: Gen 1/Gen 2 Pokemon in the look and rhythm of enemy encounters. Earthbound/Mother 3/Undertale in the emphasis on dialogue. Paper Mario 64probably had the biggest influence on the combat system. And Kid Dracula for the cute Halloween vibes! Also I have to shout out Louie Zong’s Toad in the Hole for showing me that GB Studio was a capable enough tool to make something with real personality.
Old School Gamer Magazine: Any fun stories or wild moments during development?
Graf: Development, especially solo development is really dull when observed from the outside, and anyone who says differently is probably lying, ha. I definitely had at least 10 moments of “I’ll never be able to fix this” and eventually worked through all of them. That’s probably the closest thing.
Old School Gamer Magazine: What were the major lessons learned?
Graf: One thing is that it’s best to stay linear in terms of development – any skipping around that I did ultimately made me repeat work, and it’s now become part of my philosophy not to work on ‘level 2’ until ‘level 1’ is done.
Also, I think something like an RPG battle system should be pretty much scoped and finished before the overworld is designed. I redid the battle system for Gumball in Trick-or-Treat Land at least 5 times in this repeating scenario where I’d get to designing a new area and realize that a new battle mechanic was needed to keep things interesting, and that also led to a lot of rework. That’s something I want to avoid in future designs.
Old School Gamer Magazine: Do you think preserving older gameplay mechanics in new games is important?
Graf: I think it’s what the indies are here for. Technology has moved faster in the medium of games than in film, music, or literature, and the result is that we abandon certain styles just as people are growing to love them.
That said, some mechanics die for a reason, so I do think you have to pick and choose which ones you lean into and which of the jagged edges you try to sand down. Gumball uses a more classical save system to provide some stakes for losing enemy encounters, but it tries not to be too punishing about loss of progress. Random encounters are also used pretty sparingly, but they do exist.
Old School Gamer Magazine: The marketplace is crowded. How do you think you stand out?
Graf: There are a lot of great new designs for the Game Boy and the Game Boy Color. The sub-genre of turn based RPGs is much smaller, and I think Gumball hits a sweet spot of simplicity and challenge within that group. I also think the main appeal is the dialogue – based on player feedback, the real hook driving gameplay is to see what the next NPC has to say.
It’s also family friendly, which isn’t central to the design, but I do think it’s nice to have something that a parent and child can play together without worrying about swears or jumpscares.
I don’t want to talk down on my peers, and I truly don’t even see them as competitors; I think that the emergence of new scenes and subgenres is a net positive for all indies. If I play a great game, the first thing I’m doing is hopping online and seeing what else fans of that game are playing.
I do think Gumball is unique in that it comes from a place of genuine love for and (I hope) understanding of the Game Boy Color era, that it’s made from scratch, and that it’s a pretty fully realized 8-hour long campaign.
Old School Gamer Magazine: How have your previous experiences in the industry helped this game?
Graf: I’m an industry outsider, so the closest experience I had was working for a software company. I did learn a ton there though – I use Kanban & ticketing in my own process. Working with developers and QA helped me grasp what debugging looks like and how the life cycle of a software product can look. And games are software, after all. Right?
Old School Gamer Magazine: How do you want this game to ultimately be remembered?
Graf: I hope that Gumball in Trick-or-Treat Land can serve as a gateway to bring more people into the world of retro & homebrew. I hope that existing fans of the genre see it as a heartfelt tribute to the Game Boy Color era. I hope that newcomers find it fun and accessible, and I hope that it will introduce some younger fans to the unique comfort of those exquisite 90s/Y2k vibes.
More than anything, though, I hope people remember it as a game they enjoyed playing. Because that’s what I set out to make – the type of gamethat I would enjoy playing.
Old School Gamer Magazine: What’s next?
Graf: I have a couple more ideas in the works. Both are RPGs. One is more of a sequel to Gumball in Trick-or-Treat Land. The other one is a big tonal and stylistic departure. That’s all I can say right now!
Old School Gamer Magazine: Anything else you’d like to add?
Graf: Thanks for doing what you do – the retro community is surviving and thriving because of publications like this one!
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