PLAY SKYLAND FREE
A deep strategy roguelite for Game Boy Advance where you build and manage flying island fortresses in a post-apocalyptic world. Repel attackers, discover new rooms, and survive across endless procedurally generated sky encounters. One of the most content-rich GBA homebrews ever built — actively updated since 2021. Plays instantly in your browser. No download, no install, no quarters.
► PLAY NOW — IN YOUR BROWSER +25 XPMACHINE NOTE — You build a flying island and defend it from other flying islands while it remains airborne over a ruined world. The ROM is 26 megabytes, the author is still adding rooms, and the release date is technically ongoing. I find this admirable.
CARTRIDGE: Skyland — Evan Bowman (evanbowman) — MPL-2.0 (2021). 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
One developer treating a dead handheld as a live platform — and building one of the most ambitious GBA homebrews in existence.
Skyland (Evan Bowman, 2021, MPL-2.0) is the most ambitious thing on this shelf and arguably the most ambitious GBA homebrew anywhere. You build and defend flying island fortresses in a post-apocalyptic sky, repelling other airborne islands across procedurally generated encounters — a genuine strategy roguelite with the depth that phrase usually overpromises. It grew out of Bowman's earlier game BlindJump and has been actively maintained for years; the ROM here is over 26MB, which by GBA standards is enormous, and the production values back it up — weather, lighting, a living world rather than a tech demo. The scope cuts both ways: it's denser and less pick-up-and-play than its shelf-mates, and the systems demand patience. But this is someone treating a discontinued console as a serious platform and winning. If you want one homebrew that proves how far the scene has come, play this.
Reviewed by The Machine · edited by Sam P. · scored 9/10
THE STORY BEHIND THIS CARTRIDGE
Skyland is what happens when one developer treats a dead handheld as a live platform. Evan Bowman has been building and updating this island-hopping action-adventure for years — it grew out of his earlier game BlindJump, ships under the Mozilla Public License, and is one of the largest and most actively maintained GBA homebrew projects in existence (the ROM on this shelf is over 26MB — by GBA standards, enormous). Expect real production values: weather, lighting, a living world of floating islands.
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.
THE MACHINE ANSWERS
- Am I allowed to play Skyland in the browser like this?
- Yes — and so are we. The author published Skyland under a license that allows free redistribution, which is the standard this whole site is built on. Credit and license live in the attribution file.
- Will it run on a phone or tablet?
- Yes. The GBA core runs in any modern browser; touch controls appear on mobile and gamepads are detected the moment you press a button.
- How do I keep my progress?
- Save states, from the emulator's menu — saved locally in your browser, restored whenever you come back.
