The original Mickey Mouse entered the public domain in 2024, so naturally, someone is making a Steamboat Willie horror game already. It’s a multiplayer game called ‘88 Infestation, and Nightmare Forge Games is behind it.
Nightmare Forge’s webpage mentions that the team is comprised of “industry veterans,” but this is the studio’s first game under the Nightmare Forge name.
The name '88 Infestation raised some eyebrows on Twitter for its association with alt-right slang and acronyms, but Nightmare Forge says in the Infestation Steam description that it’s just a reference to 1988, when the in-game infestation takes place.
“In the year 1988, what was thought to be an outbreak of vermin morphed into something far more sinister,” the Steam description reads. “Infestation '88 is an episodic, four-player co-op survival horror game in which you and your friends are exterminators called in to treat these mysterious infestations.”
Here, “sinister” means “Steamboat Willie, covered in blood, trying to kill you in gruesome fashion.” Nightmare Forge promises other characters from urban myths and the public domain, so we’ll probably see Slender Man and Winnie the Pooh or something similar in here at some point.
Your goal is exploring different infested locations to find the outbreak’s source and eliminating it, while finding clues about its origins and avoiding “The Antagonist” – that’s Willie – at all costs. He pops up occasionally and tries to break you, not unlike Mr X in the Resident Evil 2 remake, but you can join friends or randos in public and private lobbies to tackle the threat together.
‘88 Infestation is set to launch in early access on PC via Steam sometime in 2024, with a full launch planned roughly a year after that.
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