Disclaimer: Please note, The Chromatic and ModRetro have ties to controversial figure Palmer Luckey. NINWR LLC feels it is important to cover this software, but we do not condone the actions or opinions of any individuals involved in its production.

Four brand new games released on Game Boy a few months back. The Game Boy and its associated hardware has had a bit of a resurgence over the last years and a new generation of developers is showing what they modern tweaks they can bring to hardware that is almost forty years old. The following reviews cover the games F.C.P. ,Gravitorque DX, Self Simulated and Wicked Plague. These games have been developed by Ben Jelter, Pölet Games, 2nd Law Games and LocusMotion respectively and were all published by ModRetro who sent us these games for review. Each review lists with which Game Boy system the game is compatible.

F.C.P (First Contact Protocol), Developed by Ben Jelter. Compatible with Game Boy and Game Boy Color.

F.C.P or First Contact Protocol is a narrative driven puzzle game where you control a small gooey alien on board a spaceship. The ship and its crew are carrying a large group of people in cryostasis with the mission to find a hospitable planet. As the alien creature it is your job to influence the mission and wreak (unintentional) havoc amongst the crew. While isn’t a deep puzzle game, the interwoven narrative and choices you can make gives this sci-fi story a refreshing angle that is a great fit for Game Boy.

As the alien blob, you’ll need to regroup with your separated elements in order to gain access to new methods of control and movement. These range from the ability to understand human language, to swimming and even to be able to traverse through a creature’s digestive system. Your primary goal is to reunite your body parts and find a way to influence the mission to your benefit. This is largely done through your interactions and sabotaging of the crew. The six members of the vessel each have their own ambitions, motivations and desires that balance off each other. The proud captain wants everything to go right, but one of his officers is secretly aligned with a terrorist cell. Another one desperately longs to be with her partner who’s stationed on the mothership. While not necessarily deep, it does provide a fun framework for you to play around with. Will you assist the botanist with her goal to perform her own research mission on a different planet? Or will you help the secret terrorist to pull off her plan? The game has a large variety of outcomes, each of which changes the story in its own way.

All of this is kept track of thanks to the First Contact Protocol, in the form of a little android that assists you along the way. As part of its programming, it wants to maintain good relationships with foreign bodies, even if these outcomes tend to harm the crew on board. It is mostly a way for the player to circumvent a lot of needless actions. The droid maintains a record of passcodes and other important information you find along the way and allows you to easily access it. It feels like a direct critique of other adventure games that prolong your playtime by unnecessarily making you travel back and forth between clues and systems to enter the answers. It trims the fat and makes F.C.P. much more enjoyable for shorter sessions. Especially once you gain access to a flowchart that keeps track of the outcome of the story and allows you to go back and change things. Combined with an internal achievement system, the flowchart encourages you to replay the game and find the true ending.

Small things like the minigames to hack into terminals, puzzles where you need to rotate certain objects or remove obstacles are pretty straightforward. The narrative is the main attraction here and even through its limited visual style on Game Boy, the final result is really impressive. The layout of the ship and the characteristics of the crew are easy to remember and help you navigate between the different rooms easily. If anything, the game might be a bit too simple at times. The droid can give hints on where to go and what to do next, but that still leaves the agency of the narrative with the player. Playing the game in a few sittings is probably the best way to go as the repetitive music and repeating types of puzzles can be a bit grinding.

Overall F.C.P. is a fun narrative puzzle game that makes good use of the Game Boy hardware and tells a very compelling story. The outcomes on the flowchart are varied and encouraging enough to go back and explore more of the interpersonal relationships of the crew members. It feels unique and original within the larger Game Boy library and after nearly 35 years, that’s saying something.

F.C.P. Score: 7.5/10

Gravitorque DX, developed by Pölet Games. Compatible with Game Boy and Game Boy Color.

Gravitorque DX is a puzzle game where you’re a stranded astronaut and need to navigate through a series of gravity warping puzzles in order to reach your shipwreck. By shifting gravity you can drop the astronaut in one of the four directions and hopefully get to the end of the level. It’s a pretty simple game but makes for some nifty puzzles that quickly compound into some fun brain teasers on Game Boy.

Visually Gravitorque DX is mostly functional in its presentation. Don’t expect too many ambitious visual tricks, the puzzles are what you’ll be here for. There are four major areas each with ten puzzles to solve. The first tutorial area pretty much sets the standard for what to expect in the game. There is no way to jump, meaning that the moment you shift gravity the astronaut drops like a brick in the direction chosen. The game follows a counterclockwise direction for the gravity, meaning that when you walk you will be clinging to the wall that gravity is pushing down on. Anyone who has played those 3D Mario levels where gravity shifts, such as in Super Mario Galaxy 2, will feel right at home. It is a bit unorthodox getting to grips with the fact that you have such limited interaction with the world. While later levels present objects such as blocks that only turn on when a specific direction is chosen, there is no way to adjust your momentum after you’ve shifted gravity. That is something that took a bit longer to sink in than expected, given that this isn’t my first rodeo with gravity-based platformers.

But unfortunately outside of the puzzles Gravitorque DX was a bit too simplistic for my taste. Sure it is nice to have an easy pick-up and play puzzle game available, but the repetition sets in pretty quickly. It is akin to doing boulder pushing puzzles in an action game or perhaps a floor tile puzzle for a gym challenge in a Pokémon game. They tend to blend together quickly and while there is certainly some satisfaction when the ‘Eureka!’ moment hits, even that didn’t manage to keep my interest with Gravitorque DX that long. Even the optional collectibles really didn’t give me that much of a challenge, as I often just stumbled into them trying to solve the main puzzle. It leaves Gravitorque DX feeling a bit lacking in both scope and execution. It’s not a bad game, but a difficult one to recommend for those looking for an extensive puzzle game on Game Boy.

Gravitorque DX Score: 5/10.

Self Simulated, Developed by 2nd Law Games. Compatible with Game Boy Color.

Self Simulated is the debut title of independent developer Martin Gauer. While the Game Boy and Game Boy Color library are drowning in platformers, I found Self-Simulated to be something really special. Tying its gameplay to the themes in the story makes it feel much more grand of a game than it actually is. With modern design philosophy not simply applied in a retro aesthetic, but keeping the game simple and accessible sets Self-Simulated apart from the crowd.

Thematically the game opens strong. As a nameless android, your memory is wiped While being guided by an AI that is configured to resync the memory to the robotic body, you’re tasked with completing a number of platforming challenges as you unlock new abilities and get pushed in your platforming skill. Aesthetically you can draw similarities to Portal, being stuck inside test-chambers and learning more about your moveset as you progress. This style of restricted gameplay works well as a way to teach the player. At first you’re simply learning how to move before you even gain access to your jump. While the first rooms start out easy, that learning curve is so finely tuned, that by the time you’ve unlocked a dash, stomp jump, and double jump you already know how to chain them together. It makes for an incredibly fun platformer. The game has an autosave that makes it easy to pick-up and put-down (frankly a requirement for any Game Boy game if you ask me) as well as a near instant restart when failing a level. It was the perfect title for short pick-up-and-play sessions during my morning commute.

The game hides a lot of secrets and tidbits, because you’re also able to enter codes and unlock additional modes after completing the main story. Completing the game will take you probably only two to three hours, but the speedrun and hardcore mode are very well suited for those who want to get the most out of the game. If I have any gripes it's that while the sound design is really well done, especially noticeable when using a stereo headset, the soundtrack itself was a bit too repetitive to my taste. Relying too much on robotic-sounding compositions that become droning after a while. Part of the design I’m sure, but still what kept this game from being a near perfect Game Boy experience.

And in truth, this might be some of the most fun I’ve had on Nintendo’s handheld in quite some time. While I’ve reviewed quite a few Game Boy (Color) titles in the last year, I think that Self Simulated is the perfect encapsulation of how far Game Boy development has come over the last few years. It doesn’t overstay its welcome, has a very specific design approach and just feels perfect to control. With a lot of retro platformers it sometimes feels like you’re fighting against the system or level design itself, but even when I had to retry a level hundreds of times, I could never blame it on the design of the game. The skills were all mine and I simply had to get better at reacting and responding to its level design. And even if I wanted to, there are a ton of accessibility features that make sure that literally anyone can finish this game if they so choose. They say that limitations breed creativity, but after finishing Self-Simulated I have to say that I’m deeply curious about what 2nd Law Games could do if they weren’t simply restricted to 8-bits.

Self Simulated Score: 9/10

Wicked Plague, Developed by LocusMotion. Compatible with Game Boy Color. More often than not, when reviewing modern Game Boy (Color) titles, I’m generally impressed by the ambition of a title but find myself having a hard time seeing the game through till the end. That isn’t necessarily an indication that a game is bad or has flaws, but rather that my perception of a game being for Game Boy can make it harder to connect to something that is almost overachieving in a sense. Wicked Plague is probably the most ambitious Game Boy game I’ve ever played. A modern action-platformer with the full structure of a metroidvania with a story and a large cast of characters. This seems almost impossible to achieve on the system but what LocusMotion has pulled off here is frankly nothing short of stunning.

You play as Ramuel, son of a master exterminator, tasked with cleansing a building from a dreaded curse. While you’ll start out pretty hungover, finding your way through the passages of this old building is key to making sure that all the zombies and other monsters are taken care of. Along the way you’ll find a group of unique characters that all have their own reasons for sticking around as the curse spreads throughout the complex. Finding upgrades to your arsenal, defeating some pretty intense bosses and chugging energy drinks to recover your strength.

I think it was less than five minutes after starting the game that my jaw pretty much dropped. It is rare to see modern design sensibilities so accurately translated for the Game Boy Color. From the controls, to the layout of the areas you explore and the combat, Wicked Plague feels like it could've been released on the Switch instead. Yet, you can easily sense how the choice to create the game for Game Boy wasn’t a simple aesthetic choice. The limited hardware is exploited to its fullest but runs at a super smooth framerate. Where other games often feel like they cut back to make sure that the game is optimized, Wicked Plague seems to pull it off without breaking a sweat. The story might be small scale, but there’s full character portraits, sprite transformations and even little animation details that just ooze cool. Combined with its 90’s-like punk style Wicked Plague feels like an anime you’d have seen on a late night TV channel and it revels in that particular vibe.

The gameplay is super solid, the visuals are amazing and there are a lot of quality of life features that make the game a ton of fun to play. But I will admit that getting through Wicked Plague was a bit more difficult than I anticipated. Mostly because the wayfinding through the levels is a bit challenging. Especially with the early stages it is hard to understand the level layout and how to travel between the different areas. The dark backgrounds sometimes make it pretty unclear that you can jump through certain gaps to proceed. Early on I had to find three keys to open a locked gate and it took me far longer than necessary because I was simply running around aimlessly trying to find out where to go. There is a minimalistic map available, but with how modern the rest of the game feels it is almost a shame you can’t drop a marker to navigate with ease.

I had a great time with Wicked Plague. It is one of those games you need to see in action to understand why it is such a standout within the larger Game Boy library. The story is fun to follow along with, the difficulty is well balanced and combat feels snappy and satisfying. Do try and keep a little note to remind yourself of where you need to go to make the game a bit more enjoyable, but frankly, that’s only a small blemage on this otherwise fantastic experience.

Wicked Plague Score: 9/10