Solo dev spent 2 years building Pokemon Gamma Emerald from scratch — 384,000 animation frames

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The solo developer behind a fan-made Pokemon Emerald remake says they've been working 12-hour days for about two years to bring their project to life, during which time they created a whopping 384,000 animation frames and a whole lot more.

Pokemon Gamma Emerald launched into early access last week. Its creator, UndreamedPanic, describes it as a free, "built from scratch" remake, with this early build containing around three to six hours of gameplay. The project adds some quality-of-life improvements not found in the original Emerald, as well as additions like a day/night cycle and the option to let your Pokemon follow you around like in HeartGold and SoulSilver.

As spotted by Dexerto , on social media, Gamma Emerald's dev is adamant that "this is not a rom," nor is it a mod. "I built the assets like sprites, animations, models, music, UI, entire gamma engine myself. Calling it a mod is literally dismissing all of that haha," UndreamedPanic writes . "This is an original creation from scratch. It took 2 years to build with me working on it everyday for 12 hours a day." In a different post, they add : "I've been working to death."

Part of that was the project's animation – in a separate post , UndreamedPanic says "I did 384,000 frames of animation in the past 18 months," which definitely helps explain where those 12-hour workdays came from. Elsewhere, they reiterate : "I built this from the ground up, 0 rom, all me."

Although Gamma Emerald is in early access, UndreamedPanic said at launch that "I am not gonna fix bugs or look at them for a while, I REALLY need a break from this project." After those years of work, I don't think anyone could blame them for having a rest.

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