The Road to the Grove — 2026-07-08

A GBA demake of Baldur's Gate 3's opening, in the style of Final Fantasy IV — real D&D 5e SRD combat fought on the map, Chrono-Trigger style, with every die drawn as it lands.

To play: load nautiloid.gba in any GBA emulator (mGBA recommended).

New in this build — the adventure leaves the ship. The nautiloid crash was the end of the last release; now it's the beginning. Wake alone on the Ravaged Beach and walk the whole road from the surf to the grove gates:

• The beach. Intellect devourers on the sand, a dying mind flayer that grasps at your mind (resist with a visible skill-check die), and your scattered companions to recover — Shadowheart ashore, Lae'zel caged by frightened scavengers. Your choices on the ship shade every reunion.
• New companions. Astarion greets you knife-first; Gale pulls himself out of a portal rune. With the ones you recover, the party grows to six — swap the walking three any time out of combat from the Start menu.
• The chapel and the crypt. Bandits arguing at a tomb door (fight them, or talk past on a field check), and below: the first dark rooms, where the Everburn Blade becomes your torch, skeletons rise, and Withers wakes to offer the fallen a second chance.
• A night at camp. The campfire is your long rest — and the first night plays a song written for exactly this moment.
• The grove gates. An eleven-combatant finale: Zevlor holds the door, the Blade of Frontiers fights at your side and joins after, and the fight has a battle theme of its own. Reach the gates and the road is done — for now. Baldur's Gate awaits.

Also this build: the headline d20 now tumbles as it rolls, in combat and on skill checks; advantage and disadvantage show which die was kept; bespoke faces for more of the cast; twelve classes each in their own colors; and a soundtrack that runs surf, hymn, crypt-dark, a night ballad, and a finale that earns its name.

Every release is verified end-to-end: the full 5e rules suite, the real game logic run natively under AddressSanitizer/UBSan, scripted playthroughs of the whole arc plus a deck-brawl smoke for all twelve classes, and two ratcheted coverage floors — all green.

Includes material from the System Reference Document 5.1/5.2.1, licensed under CC-BY-4.0. Non-SRD creatures are original homebrew stand-ins; all music and art are original.

Who were you? — 2026-07-06

A GBA demake of Baldur's Gate 3's Nautiloid prologue in the style of Final Fantasy IV — real D&D 5e SRD rules, Chrono Trigger-style on-map encounters, visible dice.

To play: load nautiloid.gba in any GBA emulator (mGBA recommended).

New in this build

• All twelve classes, each with its real kit: Rage, ki (Flurry of Blows, Patient Defense), Divine Smite, Lay on Hands, Action Surge, Second Wind, Hunter's Mark, Wild Shape into the boar, and pact magic.
• Subclasses and level-up choices at real 5e XP thresholds — each class's SRD subclass plus two original homebrew ones.
• Origins: play Astarion, Gale, Karlach, Lae'zel, Shadowheart, or Wyll — or The Dark Urge, who hears intrusive thoughts at key beats. Custom Tavs get per-class portraits and walkers.
• An 83-spell table drives every caster's battle menu; prepared casters swap their list on a new Prepare screen.
• Skill checks on the field: a visible d20 rolls right over the dialog — Arcana on the rune slate, Medicine on Myrnath's skull, and stealth keyed to proficiency.
• Racial traits in the dice: halfling Lucky rerolls, half-orc Relentless Endurance and Savage Attacks.
• Battle depth: the melee engagement tether with provoke warnings and the rogue's sneak pip; allied fighters like Us and the helm's mind flayer pull real turns.
• Five new jukebox tracks (press SELECT on the title screen), including Under Selûne with a synced karaoke view.
• A crash reporter: panic screen with breadcrumbs and a build id, plus a hang watchdog — if it ever breaks, it tells you where.

Every release is verified end-to-end: scripted playthroughs for the story routes, feature checks, and a deck-brawl smoke for every class — plus the game logic compiled natively and run under AddressSanitizer/UBSan with behavioral battle tests, under two ratcheted coverage floors.

Includes content from the System Reference Document 5.1/5.2.1, licensed under CC-BY-4.0. Non-SRD creatures are original homebrew stand-ins.

The Soundtrack Update — 2026-07-03

A GBA demake of Baldur's Gate 3's Nautiloid prologue in the style of Final Fantasy IV. This update is (mostly) about the music.

To play: load nautiloid.gba in any GBA emulator (mGBA recommended), a flashcart, or Delta on iOS. On the title screen, press SELECT to open the jukebox.

An 11-track jukebox
The soundtrack grew into a small album, each track written in a specific idiom by a dedicated composer:

• Kind of Azure — modal jazz, cut the Kind of Blue way (four players tracked their parts without hearing each other).
• Gaia — the movement Holst never wrote for The Planets, complete with a 5/4 heartbeat and a Jupiter-style hymn.
• Tadpole Twist — a Dick Dale surf instrumental; the square wave does the tremolo picking for real.
• Under Selûne — a Faye Wong / "Eyes on Me" ballad. Press A on it in the jukebox for synced karaoke lyrics.
• Baldur's Bossa — a João Gilberto seaside bossa, one held note drifting over a walking harmony.
• Draw Steel! — the battle theme, reborn as Daft Punk four-on-the-floor house.
• Commander Zhalk — the boss theme, reborn as System of a Down: drop-tuned chug, odd meters, and the mind flayer's clean croon cutting through the chaos.
• Plus an enriched Prelude and the original score (Fleshy Halls, Victory, The Long Fall).

Audio fix: the ROM now initializes SOUNDBIAS, so sound plays on real hardware, flashcarts, and VBA-M-based emulators (including Delta on iOS) — not just mGBA.

Every release is verified end-to-end: scripted playthroughs for all four classes plus stealth/ambush scenarios, a counterpoint linter over every track, and a 247,702-check native test suite for the 5e rules core.

Includes content from the System Reference Document 5.1 / 5.2.1 by Wizards of the Coast, licensed under CC-BY-4.0. Non-SRD creatures are original homebrew stand-ins.

Living Nautiloid — 2026-07-03

A GBA demake of Baldur's Gate 3's Nautiloid prologue in the style of Final Fantasy IV — real D&D 5e SRD rules, Chrono Trigger-style on-map encounters, visible dice.

To play: load nautiloid.gba in any GBA emulator (mGBA recommended). Choose Bard, Rogue, Ranger, or Wizard; Lae'zel and Shadowheart can join along the way.

New in this build

• The ship is alive: imps patrol the deck rail and pod rows, watching a forward cone. Get spotted and they chase you down for an ambush (your side surprised); slip through their peripheral vision — easier with a rogue leading — and strike first from behind to surprise them.
• Two-way doors between surgery, deck, and pods: gear you missed stays reachable. The nursery and the helm remain points of no return.
• Equippable weapons found around the ship, with class-aware finds — the githyanki duelist's corpse offers a bard a rapier, a rogue a shortsword, a ranger a trident. Zhalk still drops his Everburn Blade.
• Downed party members lie where they fell; sleeping thralls snore visible zZs.
• Party menu with Equip screen, DQ-style tactics, per-die visual rolls colored by damage type.

Every release is verified end-to-end: scripted playthroughs for all four classes plus stealth/ambush scenarios, and a 247,702-check native test suite for the 5e rules core.

Includes content from the System Reference Document 5.1/5.2.1, licensed under CC-BY-4.0. Non-SRD creatures are original homebrew stand-ins.

Updated: the ROM asset was replaced with a build that fixes a finale softlock in manual play — the crash narration was invisible under the white-out, leaving the game waiting on a prompt you couldn't see. The ending now reads through the white, the prelude plays over the beach, and no note drones after a song ends.