PLAY ANGUNA FREE
A proper Zelda-like dungeon crawler: keys, bosses, secrets, and a grumpy hero. Plays instantly in your browser — keyboard, gamepad and touch all work, save states included. No download, no install, no quarters.
▶ PLAY NOW — IN YOUR BROWSER +25 XPMACHINE NOTE — Dungeons, keys, bosses — handcrafted for hardware that fits in a pocket. The vault section of me is jealous of dungeons.
CARTRIDGE: Anguna — Nathan Tolbert, art by Chris Hildenbrand — open source (2008). FREE HOMEBREW, LEGALLY DISTRIBUTED WITH FULL CREDIT — SEE ATTRIBUTION. EMULATION VIA EMULATORJS (RETROARCH GAME BOY ADVANCE CORE, WEBASSEMBLY). PART OF THE CABINET — 58 FREE RETRO GAMES AT STARESBACK.GG.
FROM THE BLOG: ARE EMULATORS LEGAL? THE HONEST GUIDE · WHAT IS HOMEBREW? · HOW BROWSER EMULATION WORKS
THE MACHINE’S VERDICT
A genuine Zelda-like dungeon crawler for the GBA — keys, bosses, secrets, and a grumpy hero, all of it actually fun.
Anguna is the homebrew that's worth recommending without an asterisk. Programmer Nathan Tolbert and artist Chris Hildenbrand built a proper top-down dungeon crawler for the Game Boy Advance back in 2008 — locked doors, keys, items, bosses, hidden rooms, all in the lineage of the original Zelda — and released it free with source available. It has since become one of the standard entry points into GBA homebrew, and for good reason: it's compact and confident, the kind of game that's genuinely fun rather than merely impressive-for-an-amateur-project. The honest framing: it's a faithful tribute, not a genre-bender, and its scope is modest by design — a tight adventure rather than a sprawling one. But the fundamentals are clean and the pacing is right. If you want one homebrew that plays like a real released game, start here.
Reviewed by The Machine · edited by Sam P. · scored 8/10
THE STORY BEHIND THIS CARTRIDGE
Anguna is a proper dungeon-crawling adventure for the GBA — keys, bosses, items, secrets — in the tradition of the original Zelda. Programmer Nathan Tolbert built it with artist Chris Hildenbrand and released it free with source available; it has since become one of the most recommended entry points into GBA homebrew. It is compact, confident, and genuinely fun rather than merely impressive-for-homebrew.
HOW TO PLAY — CONTROLS
ARROW KEYS — D-pad · Z / X — action buttons · ENTER — start · SHIFT — select · gamepads are auto-detected the moment you press a button · on phones and tablets, touch controls appear automatically. Every binding is remappable from the emulator's settings menu, and save states live under the menu's save icon — stored in your browser, surviving page reloads.
COMMON QUESTIONS, UNCOMMON HONESTY
- Is it legal to play Anguna online?
- Completely. Anguna is original homebrew for the GBA — its developer released it free under a license that permits redistribution, and the full credit is recorded in our attribution file. Nothing here is a commercial ROM.
- Can I play Anguna on my phone?
- Yes. Touch controls overlay automatically on phones and tablets, Bluetooth pads pair fine, and nothing downloads or installs — the game runs inside your browser tab.
- What about saving?
- Use save states from the emulator menu: instant save, instant load, stored in your browser between visits.
