I decided to try and make a more minimalist version of this board, replacing the IS31FL3733 LED matrix driver chip and the microcontroller with a HT16K33 chip, which can do both LED matrix control and key scanning at the same time. It will have no sound. Why didn't I use HT16K33 in the first place? Well, the main reason is because it can only switch the LEDs on or off, and doesn't have brightness control for individual pixels. That means that there will be only 4 colors available for each pixel: black, green, red and yellow. On the other hand, this chip is cheaper, easier to source and much easier to solder by hand.

The plan is to write the libraries in such a way, that most games will work on both kinds of the boards -- as long as they don't require too many subtle shades of colors. It should still be possible to make Flappy Bird, Pong, Snake, Arkanoid, Space Invaders, Rogue, Boulder Dash or similar clones, and even have some board games like Checkers or Go. Chess would require much more colors, and it would be probably hard to remember which shade is which piece.

As usual, I will see how it all works when the boards arrive.