Marbles² for the Game Boy

A 10×8 grid is dealt with four types of marble: plain, ringed, diamond, and striped. Move the cursor over a group of touching same-type marbles and press A — the whole group floods and clears. Gravity drops what's left, empty columns slide to the left, and you do it again until the board is empty.

The goal

Empty the grid while the bonus timer is still ticking. A clear of n marbles scores n², so big groups pay off super-linearly — an 8-clear is worth 64, two 4-clears are worth 32 combined. Wipe the whole board before the timer drains and you pocket a +250 bonus.

There are two modes: NORMAL (10×8, four types, 30-second bonus, undos, a store) and FAST (7×7, three types, 10-second bonus, no safety nets). Each has its own high-score slot, saved to battery-backed cartridge SRAM.

Techniques

• Don't grab the biggest group first — it's a trap. A smaller, smarter move usually leaves the board healthier.
• Watch out for lonely marbles. A marble with no same-colour neighbours is almost impossible to clear.
• Shrink the board toward one colour. Kill the rarest type first, then the next-rarest.
• Keep plenty of moves on the board. If your next clear leaves only one or two options, think twice.
• Look one move ahead — picture gravity and column-slide before you commit.

Sharing scores & boards

Every board is generated from a 16-bit seed, shown as #NNNN on the pause screen and slowly revealed under the bonus bar as it drains. Same seed + same mode = identical layout. That makes runs easy to share:

try #007A on NORMAL — I got 2,480

From the main menu, pick SET SEED, type the four hex digits, and you're playing the same board as your friend.

Share a save file. High scores live in the cartridge's battery-backed SRAM. Most emulators write this to a .sav file next to the ROM. To share a run, send the .sav — the recipient drops it in alongside their copy of gb-marbles.gb (same filename stem) and the high score, initials, seed, and level are all there.

To submit a high score to me, head to marbles2.com and upload your .sav or .srm file and it'll be automatically validated and submitted.

Controls

• D-pad — move cursor
• A — flood-clear a group, or use an armed item
• B — undo (NORMAL) or cancel an armed item
• START — pause
• SELECT — open the STORE (NORMAL only)

Credits

Built by Remy Sharp with GBDK-2020. Fonts by DamienG. Originally a Palm Pilot game written in 2002, rebuilt for the Game Boy in 2026.

The full story behind this game can be read about on my blog.