Moonwake: The Long Dawn

Moonwake: The Long Dawn expands the sky sea into 24 long stages across eight worlds, with three continuous sections in each stage. Discover 216 optional seals through roof galleries, lower grottos, returning loops, moving balconies, and lantern paths. Four distinct guardians and fifteen original 32-bar chiptune themes accompany the journey.

Original Moonwake saves migrate automatically: unlocks and first-section discoveries carry forward. The longer courses receive fresh times/ranks, and original save slots remain untouched. Continue resumes an active section or begins the next level after a clear.

The campaign targets a 60–90 minute first journey. That is a design target, not a measured human completion time; learned routes can be faster.

• moonwake.gbc: native 512 KiB CGB-only ROM, MBC5 with battery-backed 8 KiB SRAM.
• Moonwake-Play.zip: ROM, browser preview, player guide, and license notices.
• Moonwake-Source.zip: complete public source, original assets, generators, tests, and documentation.
• SHA256SUMS.txt: hashes for the release downloads.

Verification: all 24 stages, 72 sections, 216 seals and four bosses complete through real controller input, followed by fresh blank-save replay and reboot. Separate tests verify all 767 main-route landing surfaces, every new roof bridge in both directions, and all seven clues. A standalone source rebuild matches the ROM byte-for-byte. Independent scoped reviews and honest remaining limits are included.

Use FlashGBX with a compatible Chromatic cartridge. This expansion has emulator/controller verification; a connected cartridge was not available for hardware installation during this release. The original v1.0.0 remains available separately.

Code/tools/docs: MIT. Original artwork/font/music/captures: CC BY 4.0. See the included notices and repository.

Moonwake v1.0.0 — Bring the morning home

A little hare. A sleeping sky sea. One scarf to bring the morning home.

Moonwake is an original native platformer for Game Boy Color and ModRetro Chromatic. Meet Kip, a cream moon hare with a comet-red scarf, and dash across four sky-sea worlds to wake the morning.

Twelve scrolling stages, thirty-six optional seals, hidden upper routes, lantern dash refills, springs, crumbling ledges, enemy bounces, and a two-phase dreamwhale finale. Eight original four-channel music themes. Checkpoints, unlimited retries, saved best times and S/A/B medals.

Downloads

• moonwake.gbc — the native cartridge ROM. Load it in a Game Boy Color emulator or a compatible MBC5 cartridge. Use FlashGBX when writing a compatible Chromatic cartridge.
• Moonwake-Play.zip — ROM, player guide, actual gameplay teaser, local browser preview, and licensing/source notices. Extract it, enter the Moonwake folder, run python3 -m http.server 8000, and open http://localhost:8000/docs/play.html.
• Moonwake-Source.zip — full game source, original scene paintings and prompts, native asset pipeline, music, controller playtests, captures, and documentation.
• SHA256SUMS.txt — checksums for the ROM and both bundles.

Controls

D-pad moves. A jumps; hold for a higher leap. B dashes. Landing, touching a lantern, or defeating a foe restores the dash; three chained interactions restore a heart. Start pauses. Select retries the checkpoint. Press B twice on the title to start a new game.

Browser: arrows, Z = A, X = B, Enter = Start, Shift = Select.

Build and validation

256 KiB, CGB-only, MBC5 with battery-backed 8 KiB SRAM. Build with GBDK-2020 4.5.0; see the README.

This is the exact ROM installed with FlashGBX and independently read back byte-for-byte from the development Chromatic cartridge. The published source rebuild matches it. A fresh controller-only campaign and independent linear replay clear all twelve stages, earn all thirty-six seals, reach the ending, and restore completion after reboot. Details and testing scope are in validation notes.

ROM SHA-256:

9310fa3d598b72b41c56b46f1a99b373b7176dcb38d1fc5de795f1520ab38bc7

Open source

Game code/tools/docs: MIT. Original art/font/music/captures: CC BY 4.0. Attribution: Moonwake by sdiaoune. Browser-emulator and runtime notices/source are included in both bundles; see third-party notices.

Created with Codex and specialist art, level, audio, and critic subagents. Scenery starts from original AI-generated paintings; the exact prompts, source images, and conversion pipeline are public. Native sprites, foreground materials, typography, and music are authored in source. Forks and improvements are welcome.