Resident Evil: Grim Beginnings

Welcome to Resident Evil: Grim Beginnings - an unfinished, yet fully playable, Game Boy demake of the original Resident Evil. The game was developed over an extended stay when I was stranded across seas during the height of the Pandemic. Not knowing when the flight embargo were going to be lifted, I worked on this project as a way to keep myself sane and creatively engaged. What started as a simple toy-around with the GB Studio seeing if I could recreate a room or two with some zombies slowly expanded into an attempt to fully recreate the original game.

But, the flight embargo lifted as the game was only 90% complete, life got in the way and I never got around to finishing up the rest. It has been sitting on a shelf collecting dust for the past year and a half, which never sat right with me. I decided to release the game as it currently stands and offer some comments down below explaining all that is missing, glitched or otherwise.

This project was my first time making any sort of video game so it is what it is. A few notes:

-The game is faithful to the original but I did infuse this version with my own irreverent humor and selected to alter things to make the tone more comical. 

-The game covers the first mansion segment of the original game and ends when you have collected all the mansion masks. 

-The Merchant offers all the mansion keys if you wanted to explore the mansion without limits.

-You can only play as Jill (costume switching available)

-You can only use the handgun (additional weapons was ambitious for me)

-The game was developed with an early build of GB Studio where limited colors were available. I would have used more than two colors if it were possible.

-Combat is a little repetitive and simple. I would spend time fleshing it out if I were to do it again.

-Zombies do not move outside of combat due to software limitations at the time of development.

MISSING:

-An opening story prelude prior to the helicopter crash akin to the 2002 remake. (This was almost complete but I lost the files)

-All background music and sound effect. (Any music and SFX in this build are temporary placeholders and some music does not end when intended thus bleeding into the next scene)

-Story scene with Chris stuck up the tree outside the mansion.

-Some inventory items have no text boxes when viewing/ inspecting them.

-No Barry story scenes in Shotgun & Butterfly rooms.

-No puzzle in the Crow hallway. 

-Story scene with Wesker introducing the birthday party after collecting all the Masks.

BUGS:

-Some music will flow over to the next scene and continue indefinitely or until another music cue is activated.

-There is a debug space in the bottom left corner of the helicopter opening which skips all story scenes leading up to the mansion. (It also skips the combat tutorial)

-Some symbols are incorrect in text boxes such as: #,&,+,* etc. and are displayed as random red letters. If you see 'enemy speed h1' it is supposed to read 'enemy speed +1', for example.

-Player can get stuck when lighting the Warp Point in the mask room when done so from the top. (you can use the Warp Point to travel to unstick yourself if you have another one lit)

-Player can get softlocked if box spawns on player location in Zora Mask room.

-Any non-headshot on a Web Spinner is also a critical hit and causes the bonus round.