Skyrim is a decade-old game that still has a vibrant modding community, where there are people still making hundreds, if not thousands, of mods for Bethesda's RPG every year. A lot would change, if instead of developing for 10 year old software, these passionate fans were producing content for 20 year old hardware. That seems to be the future that Dana Puch, developer of The Shapeshifter, hopes for. The Barcelonan developer creates games exclusively for old Nintendo game systems, particularly the Game Boy. In fact, The Shapeshifter marks his fifth foray into Game Boy software design.

Thinking that The Shapeshifter's popularity would be negatively affected by this limited release would be understandable. However, that thought could not be further from the truth. In just five months, the game's Kickstarter raised well over $70,000, absolutely smashing its stretch goals. This is over triple the money that some of Puch's previous Kickstarter campaigns raised, with Game Rant speaking with the developer about this most recent title. The GreenBoy Games lead talked about many things, including emulation, inspirations, and the desire to keep old hardware alive.

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Unsurprisingly, making games for a discontinued console is not exactly easy especially when the game in question is as ambitious as The Shapeshifter. There is a laundry list of limitations that haunt developers of authentic Game Boy software. While modern developers who only emulate the style or aesthetics can bypass these easily, creating a title specifically for the Game Boy's architecture means taking the long route. Greenboy Games' products show a real progression its understanding of these limitations. Dana Puch is no novice in pulling as much as possible from the Game Boy's limited resources. In describing the confines of the development space, Puch remarked:

[You have to] make a game using only 4 colors (3 colors with the sprites), using only a predefined green palette, a game from 32kB to 1MB, music limited to 4 channels, limit of objects on screen and objects per line. [...] They are all restrictions!

Although The Shapeshifter is admittedly restricted, Puch understands how one can still innovate for the Game Boy. Talking abut The Shapeshifter, Puch said it is his "most ambitious game" yet. This is because he is "applying all the techniques and mechanics that I can make in a game," and has managed to improve the graphics "compared to [his] first Game Boy games." Watching a developer innovate within old hardware restrictions is similar to watching Hearthstone pros returning to the game's base state and creating the best Hearthstone classic decks possible. In the words of Puch himself, when working with limited resources, "you cannot create what you want, but you have to be creative enough to make a good game."

So, just how is Dana Puch innovating with The Shapeshifter? The unerring commitment to including a variety of gameplay styles is how. Puch's new game borrows from a wealth of influences, and the mechanic of switching between animals with different powers allows for these styles to seamlessly integrate into the game. When asked about his favorite Game Boy titles, Puch replied: "My favorite Game Boy game is The Shapeshifter!" Leaving jokes aside, he responded "I love Gargoyle's Quest...combining an RPG with platforming blew me away when I was young." After some further thought, he added that he also loves Super Mario Land, "and Tetris."

Many of these games can be seen in the huge range of gameplay offered in The Shapeshifter. According to the developer, "during the game, you can find 'point and click', action/adventure, platforms .. and downhill slalom with skis!" It's not just mechanical variety this game has. Puch's enthusiasm about the downhill slalom section is indicative of the game's larger atmosphere - pure excitement and fun.

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One of Puch's most interesting remarks was about the philosophy behind developing for the Game Boy. Of PC and Android development, he said "the problem is the lack of satisfaction developing for those platforms." While a PC release might make more money, it does not present the same challenge as producing content for Game Boy architecture does. There is more than just challenge at work here, however. For The Shapeshifter, the term "design philosophy" is more literal than one might expect. When asked about the challenging nature of his development practices, Dana Puch donned a somewhat philosophical hat.

Surely you will know a creative trend of the 60s, the Oulipo movement. "Oulipo" means creativity by restriction. You must be creative with some given restrictions, like the "Abecedaire,: where you need to create a text in which the initials of successive words are followed in alphabetical order.

What Puch is referring to here with "Oulipo" is the "Ouvroir de Litterature Potentielle" movement. The French roughly translates as "workshop of potential literature." This artistic trend was made up of French writers and mathematicians who used "constrained writing" techniques to try and creatively innovate, and the process is very similar to a modern "game jam." In these jams, developers get together and have to make games under certain restrictions (usually time). The indie classic Superhot came from one of these events. For Puch, "developing games for Game Boy is more or less the same" as this French principle. By adding huge restrictions, the game's potential massively increases. More than anything else, Dana Puch hopes this design philosophy "will help maintain the legacy of retro gaming and give the cartridge a long life."

The Shapeshifter will release on Game Boy and NES.

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