Inspired by the golden age of 16-bit adventures, Horn of Balance is an action-adventure game that pays homage to the classic Zelda formula while introducing its own mechanics, secrets and challenges. Developed by Dutch indie developer Martijn den Hollander, the project has evolved from a personal experiment into an ambitious independent game.
The story follows Linden, a young golem whose grandmother has been kidnapped by the villain Heimgartner and his gang. Determined to rescue her, Linden must explore intricate dungeons, overcome dangerous enemies and solve puzzles along the way. Accompanied by the mysterious floating skull Murray, players will gradually uncover the secrets behind this unusual adventure.
Featuring non-linear exploration, challenging dungeons, hidden secrets and a cast of memorable characters, Horn of Balance aims to capture the sense of discovery that made classic Zelda games so special, while incorporating modern conveniences such as autosaves, map markers and customizable controls.
What began as a hobby project has grown into a full-time development undertaking. Built with GameMaker Studio 2, the game is being developed primarily by Martijn himself, with support from commissioned artists. Its demo was released on indiexpo on March 16, 2024, offering players a first look at its world through the introductory section and an early dungeon.
We spoke with Martijn about his journey as an indie developer, the inspirations behind Horn of Balance, the challenges of building such an ambitious project and his advice for aspiring game creators.
1: Could you introduce yourself and tell us a little about your background in game development?
Hi, I'm Martijn, 42, from the Netherlands.
I have an education in Applied Business Mathematics, with a varied career as a Business Development Engineer, Process Owner and various tech-related side activities.
Building games has always been a hobby of mine to tinker with during college and beyond. Something to blow off steam during the weekends, you know. I was always working on a fangame based on the SNES game “A Link to the Past”. So I kept that up all the way until Covid hit (so for about 14–15 years), and then we all suddenly had a lot of extra time on our hands. That was a time to reflect on the state of things, and I had already started to feel constrained by the limitations of the original SNES game. And so I took a big gamble and decided to redo the entire game in order to turn it into something new and more original. There was a modest Kickstarter in 2024 to test the waters, which luckily ended successfully. And since then, the project has grown, and I'm currently working on it full-time.
2: What is Horn of Balance and what can players expect when they play it?
Horn of Balance is an action-adventure game, heavily inspired by the Zelda games from my childhood. Specifically, the game focuses on exploration, finding secrets and beating large, complex dungeons. With sequence-breaking potential baked into the design as you progress.
There is plenty of combat and puzzles, but above all else, you'll like this game if you're in the mood for a sense of discovery. Each room is different. Locations each have their own style and mechanics. Enemies and bosses have hidden weaknesses and quirks. And you are allowed to get lost for a bit, so that you can slowly understand the bigger picture and triumph on your own.
The demo shows some of this by including the intro section and one full early-game dungeon. But the full game will obviously start opening up further as more tools and abilities become available. By release, it should contain 100+ unique enemies and 12 different dungeons, just to give you a sense of the scale. Expect a meaty experience!
3: What famous game inspired you to create it?
The obvious inspiration is “A Link to the Past”, given the origins as a fangame. If that's a game you like, then you owe it to yourself to give this game a try as well. It'll feel like replaying the classics for the first time again, as parts of the formula already get played around with fairly soon. Also note that it's a bit more challenging in terms of puzzles and dungeon design. And there are quality-of-life changes, new items and new mechanics added in for good measure.
Aside from that, I'd say most of the other Zelda entries come to mind. Like Link's Awakening and Skyward Sword (minus the handholding). Those two especially had some lovely puzzle designs in them. And there is a smidge of Soul Reaver and Vagrant Story DNA added in for added flair and personality.
4: How did you approach the development of Horn of Balance, and what tools or game engine did you use to build it?
So it literally started out as a program with a character just doing some screen transitions. And then I kept adding aspects on top of that for many years until people generally assumed I had simply hacked the original game, which was funny. The very first dungeon I ever made was also just me adding rooms with new mechanics, so that I had places to add new mechanics. I learned a lot from that, and it really gave me motivation to keep going. Although it is a terrible way to work professionally, it did produce an early game where there was something new around every corner.
Nowadays I work with a much clearer goal in mind. With a roadmap, massive tables for items and enemy stats, and dungeon progression charts. Finishing the grand design and framework first helps make it a more even and focused experience. Though I still like to add fun surprises and variety wherever I can.
5: Why Game Maker 2? Did you never try other engines or tools such as Unity or Godot?
Well, Unity is dead to me after their corporate greed debacle. No serious long-term business can be built on a partner eager to stab their community in the back like they tried to do. That's not even mentioning their high costs. Godot looks good, albeit a little harder to get into. But I just never had the cause to swap engines, and you don't swap mid-project anyway. That would take months upon months of added work.
I do have to say that I'm a little baffled Game Maker is as underrated as it is. I'm personally using it because it was the tooling I rolled into, and there has never been a cause for me to want to switch. And by that I mean that I've always been able to build whatever complex ideas I had without issue. It's free to try out, and there is only a small one-time (!) payment when you're ready to get serious. The console porting add-ons also make it the cheapest/easiest porting option compared to third-party porting partners (or Unity in general). And they've got interesting 3D and coding options in the pipeline, so I'm good where I am.
So in short: also consider GameMaker if you're starting a new project.
6: What was the biggest challenge you faced while developing Horn of Balance and how did you solve it?
Technically, I've not had too much trouble, but one interesting challenge I came across was how to do palette swaps for the hero character. (The hero's colors are based on their worn clothing, items, item slots used and remaining health). Game Maker currently does not offer such an option inherently, and I'm not a fan of being dependent on store extensions. Plus, the game already used well over 200 character frames by that point, so just making recolored copies per use case would have been impractical.
What I ended up doing was building a little shader script that checks each hero pixel against the top row of a colorswap texture. If the color matches in a specific column, then it draws the pixel in a color lower down the texture instead. The row index to use depends on the hero's gear and stats. So it's basically a shader using a texture as a color lookup table, in a sense. I'm sure plenty of people have found similar solutions, and this is by no means the most complex thing you can do with shaders, by far. But I had never used shaders before, and they take some time to wrap your head around. So I'm still kinda proud of that one, for how elegant it turned out.
7: Any info about the full release date?
The game is currently scheduled to release later in 2027, but I don't have an exact date for you at this time. More will be announced next year.
I do expect to release one or two small demo updates in between now and then. Mostly focused on adding more quality-of-life features and possibly slightly more of the overworld. So follow the project to be notified when those happen.
8: Was there a particular gameplay mechanic, design decision, or feature that you really wanted to get right?
I could list so many things here. Basically, whatever I touch, I tend to keep working on until it feels just right. For example: I recently spent days adding the end-game interactions with a massive ancient toad that'll should get some laughs out of people.
But if I had to choose one thing, then I would say it's the hero animations. The game has a silent protagonist, so animations are one of the few ways left to add personality. Linden is a very open, playful and energetic character, so there is some fun squash and stretch when you select a game file. When you wait to select a file, they do little idle animations, like a wave or some stretching. When you jump into the water, there is a little nose pinch before landing. When you die, it is done in an overly theatrical fashion. They find items like the gloves, hammer and final boomerang to be cool, and so they use cool poses when using them. When you unlock running, you can see them in a prep stance at the start. I could go on and on. I poured a lot of love into these animations that I hope people will appreciate.
9: Are you using AI tools to make this game?
No, I very much avoid AI tools!
I experimented with AI a while back, to understand what it was and could do. (Because I actually like to be informed about subjects). And it was a terrible experience. Like working with a slot machine, or an artist that always picks the most generic options, makes dreadful mistakes and is terrible at consistency and edits. It can't do pixel art in a way that matters to me, and straight-up invents non-existent coding functions.
Also note that AI is heavily subsidised. So even if the AI bubble does not burst, which I believe it will, and there are no artistic/environmental/privacy concerns, which there absolutely are, then it is still guaranteed to become vastly more expensive and worse in the future. And to top it all off, games/products with AI simply sell worse, according to Steam and consumer-product studies.
So no. All assets, coding and design in the game are handcrafted by myself and the people I've commissioned. Only my capsule art, which I paid an artist for, (probably) contains some AI in it, but that is me getting scammed before AI was widespread. (Another lovely benefit of AI being a thing). I'm still looking to replace that when I find an artist I like and can trust to be human/genuine.
10: What was the most difficult part of developing an indie game as a solo developer?
There were two main “make-or-break” moments at the start. That is to say: shortly after the pivot to make this an original game.
The first was to sprite the mountain tiles. I wanted to stick to the perspective from A Link to the Past, but it turned out that there are good reasons people don't make tiles like that. Aside from the perspective, the tileset is very complex in how it all interlinks and has to work together. I ended up having to make them myself, and it took about a month and several complete retries to get done.
The second challenge was to find a good, reliable pixel artist. I must have tried out about two dozen people over on Fiverr before I found Kohari. It was disheartening to encounter artist after artist who either delivered weak results, was difficult to work with or plain unprofessional. There was even a case where someone sold edits of my work to the next customer. I had basically given up, and gave Kohari a shot thinking that, if nothing else, I'd at least be sponsoring a Ukrainian when the war had started recently. But it turned out she was lovely to work with, and her work came in way above the rest! She's been my favourite artist ever since.
11: Looking back at the development of Horn of Balance, what is one thing you would do differently if you started the project again?
If I ever undertake a project as big as this again, then I would switch to a more conventional perspective. Being able to standardize the walls, mountains and dirt patterns would save a ton of time while spriting, and it would allow me to use auto-tiling tools. For the most part, I am currently hand-tiling everything, as a result of wanting to keep that close to the SNES aesthetics.
Aside from that, I would probably make future games smaller, with a shorter development time. I especially like designing dungeons and puzzles, so it would be nice if I could focus most of my time on that, in a more condensed experience.
12: What advice would you give to someone who is currently working on their first indie game?
People don't want to hear this, but the world of indie game developers is crowded, developing games is a gamble and the VAST majority of people actually lose out and lose money. If you're young and want to earn a (stable) income, then you should literally do anything else. Don't just assume that you are special and the exception. You might be, but have a plan for when reality hits.
A similar piece of advice, but basically: putting all your eggs in one basket is a terrible idea. You'll grow more and faster if you do smaller games (first).
There are many good people and publishers out there, but you WILL receive offers from scammers and leechers. Do your research!
13: What game have you discovered recently on indiexpo that impressed you or caught your attention?
I can't exactly tell if it's a hack or a build from the ground up, which should tell you how genuine their graphics look. The added Game Boy box art is also a nice touch.
14: What would you say to someone who has never played Horn of Balance before? Why should they give it a try, and where can they play it?
Follow Horn of Balance if you're in the mood for a dense action-adventure game with tons of polish and heart put into it. The dungeons are plenty, with vast and challenging designs that'll make you think. The world is expansive and full of secrets. The enemies and characters are varied, the bosses are massive and the story goes places.
If you're into the SNES-style games, then this will feel familiar, yet fresh. And if you're more into modern gaming, then you'll appreciate modern staples, like auto-saving and key rebinding.
The demo can be found on indiexpo, Steam and itch.io. The full game will release on Steam and possibly more platforms if the game performs well enough.
If you love classic Zelda-style adventures, challenging dungeons, secrets waiting to be discovered and worlds that reward exploration, Horn of Balance is definitely worth checking out.
The demo gives you the opportunity to experience the beginning of Linden's journey and explore one of the game's early dungeons. You can discover what Martijn has been working on and get a taste of the adventure ahead!
