Chantey is a new pirate metal rhythm game — and it’s launching on Game Boy

This story is part of our Summer Gaming Marathon series.

Digital Trends can exclusively reveal that ModRetro is publishing Chantey, a pirate-themed metal rhythm game from Greek indie game studio Gortyn Code that’s coming to both Game Boy and Chromatic.

The Chromatic is a new video game handheld inspired by the Game Boy. It’s compatible with cartridges for original Game Boy and Game Boy Color games, but ModRetro is also publishing titles on dedicated Chromatic game cartridges. Chantey will be one such game when it launches in the first quarter of 2025. Developer K.C. Apostolakis tells Digital Trends that the Chromatic is “identical to the Game Boy Color in every respect (right down to the screen resolution), but everything has been cranked up to 11 so that the Game Boy playing experience can be modernized and brought up to speed with today’s gaming standards.”

Chantey is an 8-bit open-world rhythm game built to work on the original Game Boy and follows an up-and-coming pirate as he gets swept up in a conflict between descendants of the legendary Nightingale Pirate and collects mystical sea chanteys. It features a soundtrack with original pirate metal tracks and chiptune versions of sea chanteys such as Drunken Sailor and Bully in the Alley. Check out its reveal trailer below to see the game in action.

Chantey features an open world with 11 different cities to explore via The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening-style top-down gameplay. There are also battle of the bands-style rhythm battles where players will have to hit the Chromatic’s A, B, and D Pads to the beat of pirate metal chiptunes. Rhythm is a game genre we didn’t see much of on Game Boy, which Apostolakis says caused some challenges during the development process.

“Unlike the top-down adventure elements, there were no major Game Boy game references (that I was aware of, at the time) to work off of, to base the rhythm sections on,” Apostolakis says. “I had to try (and fail) with several different prototypes,