Wicked Plague (2025)

I picked a hell of a time to get back into Game Boy games.

Have you seen this ModRetro shit? People are fucking pissed at having to confront the ethics of an amusements company being directly attached to the military industrial complex. You’d think they would have given any amount of a shit about the decades of precedent for this exact kind of thing – where do you think FPGA even came from? – but I’m glad people are at least being a little bit more conscious of what they consume. Here’s hoping it’ll stick when it isn’t just expensive gunmetal Game Boys.

You know who I came away from all this kerfuffle respecting? A handful of the devs who signed games for distribution with ModRetro. Don’t get me wrong, having partnered with them in the first place is indicative of a lapse of judgement at best and outright malice at worst, but when I see the devs respond to the announcement by making their $40 cartridge free or close enough on Itch? That’s the good shit, that’s how you actually strike a blow, even when it’s directly at cost to yourself. And then you have the folks like Locus-motion, developer of Wicked Plague, who straight up encourages people to track the rom down should that be the route you want/need to go. Good on y’all.

…makes the rating seem a bit weird, huh?

Wicked Plague should be a knockout. It makes incredible use of GB Studio, an engine I’m used to seeing struggle with grid based walking simulators. They should be using this thing as a case study for what the tool can do. Movement? Kinda Soma-era Castlevania, albeit with fewer tricks. Music? Hits the vibes perfectly. The spritework? Holy shit. If it wasn’t for the aspect ratio I might have thought this was a GBA game. If this’d come out back in the day it would have blown minds and destroyed penises.

Then you play the actual game, and it’s pretty solid! Bit vanilla, bit simple, borderline linear despite its clear inspirations, but I’m not really upset at chaining combats and checking closets for energy drinks (your abilities return by curing your hangover via chugging cans, it’s a nice thematic touch). This could really be something! Why…why am I already at the top of the tower?

Oh. Oh it’s over. It’s over in under two hours. That’s why. Wait, ModRetro charges forty dollars for this? Hahahahahaha get fucked.

Look: my intent is not to criticize a dev for releasing a short game at a high price, especially a freshman solo effort that’s this polished. Decisions like that rarely fall to the dev, and besides, I love short games! I spent roughly 5 years almost exclusively playing and reviewing indies. Digestible games I can beat in a weeknight or two are my jam. But Wicked Plague doesn’t just end, it can barely wait to end, and it’s not like the publisher didn’t know that. It only just introduces movement options beyond the double jump before credits roll, and I know I didn’t miss anything of note because you need those to get to and beat the boss in the first place. I 100%’d this thing inside a Steam refund window. Imagine buying a Chromatic to own the drone strike dislikers or whatever, spending Analogue Pocket amounts of money, only to wrap your new game before you even need a bathroom break. Sure that’s authentic to a lot of Game Boy games, but is that really the kind of authenticity anyone wants?

Then there’s the translation. Again I am not faulting the dev at all here, English isn’t their first language. I’m pointing the finger directly at ModRetro. You’re supposed to be a publisher and partner – fucking act like it and make this shit comprehensible. This game reads terribly. The characters can barely hold a conversation; they just kind of speak at each other, words tumbling every which way that rarely mean exactly what they intend. It never got in the way of actually completing the game but that’s only on account of there being so little game to complete in the first place.

This feels like an Emperor’s Clothes moment in a lot of ways. ModRetro is putting drone-compatible lipstick on Itch games, y’all. Hopefully they don’t fry consoles like Limited Run’s! If you want to overpay for a fancy cart just talk to Incube8, not that you have to given that they’re reasonable enough to offer digital versions.

Incredible things have been happening in the Game Boy scene over the last several years. I’m not naive enough to think that consumers will smarten up long-term when they can’t even stop giving Microsoft money, but I at least hope that when they’re done making easy dunks on a magnesium Little Tikes hoop they’ll exhibit a bit of curiosity as to why people would want it in the first place. Just know that Wicked Plague doesn’t warrant being an accessory to an aspiring war criminal.

2.5/5

Itch page here, though the game is currently broadly unavailable aside from the physical cart. I recommend waiting for an eventual fully independent release.