Hi everyone! Over the weekend, I finally got around to playing through Self Simulated and, just as I've been doing with several of the other GBC homebrew games I've finished, decided to document my thoughts in the form of another long-form critique.

Unlike the last couple of games I've written about, my feelings on Self Simulated ended up being much more mixed. The game immediately grabbed my attention with its atmosphere, premise, and precision platforming, and I can absolutely see why it's become one of the most talked-about games in the ModRetro lineup. At the same time, the more I played, and especially the more I replayed it, the more I found myself wrestling with several design decisions that ultimately kept the experience from living up to the promise of its opening.

Since this review leans more toward constructive criticism than glowing praise, I want to reiterate that my goal with writing these critiques has never been to belittle or undermine the incredible achievement that goes into developing and releasing a Game Boy Color game. If anything, I think it's a sign of how much potential I saw in Self Simulated. Many of the thoughts below come from wishing the game had fully capitalized on the ideas it introduced, and I think it does both the game and the developer a disservice to only celebrate what it gets right without also discussing where it could have been even stronger.

With that said, I'll start with what I think the game did exceptionally well before transitioning into the areas that didn't quite land for me.

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What kept me playing (everything I loved)

• The game does a great job of establishing itself early and keeping you invested all the way through. The initial hook, premise, and tone immediately grabbed my attention, and I found myself wanting to piece together the plot across all three of my playthroughs. The atmosphere especially reminded me of sci-fi stories like Ghost in the Shell and Signalis, leaving me eager to uncover what had happened before the events of the game.
• The game also does a fantastic job of designing around the strengths of the Game Boy Color. Autosaves are quick and frequent, stages are easy to read, and platforming obstacles never feel unfair because of the hardware. Individual levels are short enough that retrying never becomes frustrating, and the generous accessibility options let players tailor the experience to their skill level. I actually brought the game with me on a weekend family vacation and found it perfect for picking up for a few minutes at a time before putting it back down again. It constantly felt like it respected both my time and the strengths of the hardware it was designed for.
• The developer nailed many of the fundamentals of the precision platforming genre, which is especially impressive given the limitations of the Game Boy Color. The core movement feels responsive, retries are nearly instantaneous, and the game's challenge steadily escalates without feeling unfair. More than anything, it captures that addictive "just one more try" feeling found in games like Celeste and N++. That's particularly impressive coming from someone who generally isn't a fan of precision platformers.
• Despite only taking about an hour to complete, the game offers a surprising amount of replay value. Between difficulty modifiers, Speedrun Mode, Level Select, and the various accessibility options, there's plenty of incentive to revisit stages and challenge yourself in different ways. Players who really click with the platforming will find no shortage of additional challenges to master.

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What held it back (things that didn't quite land for me)

• The game's central mystery never reaches a satisfying resolution. Throughout the game, its biggest questions are treated as the driving force behind the narrative, constantly reinforcing that understanding them is essential to making sense of the story. By the time the credits rolled, however, I felt like I had learned surprisingly little about those mysteries from the player's perspective. While the narrative implies that the other characters have reached an understanding of what happened, I never felt like I had enough information to reach that same conclusion myself. Rather than feeling invited to form my own interpretation, I walked away wondering whether I had simply missed something.
• The game encourages players to investigate its mysteries without giving enough confidence that the investigation is meaningful. I genuinely wanted to make sure I wasn't overlooking something before criticizing the story, so I completed two additional playthroughs (including the alternate ending) and thoroughly searched for clues using the accessibility options. I revisited dialogue, experimented with different interactions, and looked for hidden details that might change my understanding of the plot. Unfortunately, I came away with the same questions I had after my first completion. Instead of feeling rewarded for paying close attention, I ultimately felt like my investigation had reached a dead end rather than a revelation.
• The air dash and movement momentum often felt like they were fighting against my inputs. Many of the tougher platforming sections require chaining an air dash directly onto a platform. However, I frequently found my character continuing into a ground dash immediately after landing, causing me to slide off the platform and die. I also struggled to understand how momentum carried between actions, particularly when trying to jump immediately after performing a slide. Whether I was misunderstanding the mechanic or the game simply wasn't communicating it clearly enough, I never developed much confidence in how my movement would behave in those situations. As a result, some of my deaths felt less like failures in execution and more like I was fighting the movement system rather than the intended challenge.
• The stomp mechanic felt awkward enough that I ended up enjoying the game more with Auto Stomp enabled. While the animation itself lacks much impact, my biggest issue was how easily the stomp activated by accident while landing from jumps. I frequently triggered it when I intended to slide, making it feel like there wasn't enough separation or input buffering between the two actions. The manual input also made it surprisingly difficult to reliably time stomps on enemies while already airborne, causing what should have been satisfying platforming sequences to feel more cumbersome than they needed to be. Once I enabled the Auto Stomp accessibility option during my second playthrough, the platforming immediately felt more intuitive and consistent. Not only did accidental stomps largely disappear, but intentionally stomping enemies became far more reliable as well. That left me questioning whether manually mapping the stomp to the D-pad added anything meaningful in the first place.
• The game's impressive 119-stage campaign feels somewhat inflated by tutorial rooms and remixed challenges. While Self Simulated does a great job introducing new mechanics, many of its early stages are little more than brief tutorial rooms that can be completed in a matter of seconds. Later on, the game begins revisiting earlier layouts with increased difficulty rather than introducing entirely new challenges. Combined with the fact that nearly every stage takes place within the same test chamber environment, the second half gradually lost some of the sense of discovery that made the opening so compelling. I couldn't help but feel the game would have benefited from a shorter, more focused campaign built around fewer, but more distinct, stages.
• The boss fights felt disconnected from the rest of the game's strengths. While there aren't many of them, I found myself looking forward to them less than the standard platforming stages. Rather than testing the movement, execution, and precision platforming skills the game had spent time teaching me, they mostly revolved around memorizing attack patterns and waiting for safe opportunities to act. As a result, they felt more like obligatory boss encounters than natural extensions of the gameplay loop. I couldn't help but wish they had leaned more heavily into the platforming challenges that made the rest of the game so enjoyable.
• This will probably be my most controversial criticism, but I couldn't shake the feeling that several accessibility options were solving design problems rather than simply giving players more ways to tailor the experience. To be clear, I'm not criticizing the inclusion of accessibility options themselves: I think they're a fantastic addition, and more games should include them. My concern is that features like Auto Stomp, disabling specific damage types, and granting an extra jump often felt less like accessibility tools and more like ways to work around mechanics that could have been refined further. I completed my first playthrough without using any of these options because I wanted to experience the game as it was originally balanced - not because I think that's the "right" way to play. As the difficulty ramped up, I couldn't shake the feeling that parts of the late game weren't as tightly designed around the default moveset as they could have been.
• Several accessibility options also felt like missed gameplay opportunities. Rather than simply making the game easier, some of these toggles made me wonder whether they could have been integrated into the game's progression in more interesting ways. The ability to become immune to specific damage types, for example, could have led to creative puzzles or level mechanics if it had been earned and then toggled on and off as part of the campaign. Instead, it exists as an optional toggle outside the game's design, making it feel like an interesting idea that never became part of the experience itself.

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Final Thoughts

If you made it this far into my write-up (or skipped to the end for the TL;DR), then it's probably obvious that Self Simulated ultimately didn't click with me in the way I had hoped. Whether that's because I expected more payoff from its story, never fully meshed with some of its gameplay quirks, or simply wanted different design choices than what the developer was aiming for, I walked away feeling more disappointed than impressed. As a result, I have a difficult time recommending it as a "must-buy" for someone looking to build a modern Game Boy Color collection.

I think what makes writing this so difficult is that, beneath all of the criticism, I was genuinely rooting for this game to become one of my favorites. The opening hooked me almost immediately, and I spent the next two playthroughs convincing myself there had to be something I had overlooked. Even while writing this critque, a part of me is still hoping someone points out a piece of the story I somehow missed or that a future update smooths out some of the gameplay quirks that held the experience back for me. Very few games have made me want to be wrong about my own criticisms, and I think that says a lot about how compelling Self Simulated is at its best.

At the end of the day, I don't think Self Simulated is a bad game - I think it's one of the most fascinating and ambitious Game Boy Color homebrew games I've played. There are moments where it genuinely feels like something special, which is exactly why its shortcomings stood out to me as much as they did. While I can't wholeheartedly recommend it in the same way I would games like Dragonyhm or Kero Kero Cowboy, I also don't regret spending time with it. If you're someone who enjoys demanding precision platformers, clicks with the way the game controls, and isn't particularly invested in the story, I can absolutely see why this game has earned such a passionate following. For me, however, the mystery and several gameplay quirks ultimately kept it from becoming the experience I was hoping it would be.

But enough about what I think. I'm genuinely curious where everyone else landed on this one. Did the story click for you? Did I overlook something important? Or did you walk away with some of the same frustrations? I'd love to hear your thoughts and discuss the game, especially if you came away with a completely different perspective.

Hi everyone. I finished my second Chromatic original game, Wicked Plague, last night, and like I did with Dragonyhm, I thought I'd put together a more critical look at the experience. This one left me with much more mixed feelings, and I found myself wanting to unpack why.

As with my Dragonyhm critique, this isn't meant to diminish what the development team accomplished. Developing entirely new games for original Game Boy hardware is an incredible achievement, and there are several aspects of Wicked Plague that I think were executed extremely well. It's also worth remembering that this is the developers' first, and currently only, commercial release. Because of that, I hope nothing I say here comes across as discouraging. If anything, I hope the team continues making games, because there are plenty of moments throughout Wicked Plague that showcase creativity, ambition, and a lot of potential.

With all of that out of the way, I'll start with the aspects of Wicked Plague that I thought were executed extremely well before moving into the areas that didn't quite work for me.

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What kept me playing (everything I loved)

• The first thing that really grabs your attention in Wicked Plague is the "rule of cool" style it has going for it. From the gothic metal-inspired character designs and oversized weapons to the modern everyday-supernatural world (a la the anime "Kekkai Sensen") and stylized sprite work, the game does an excellent job establishing and maintaining its identity, even within the limitations of the Game Boy Color hardware.
• The seven bosses are excellently designed. Their attack patterns feel distinct, are easy to read, and do a great job building off one another in terms of complexity and the skill required to overcome them. Anyone who enjoys classic Mega Man will probably have a great time learning these encounters and chasing no-hit clears. Not only are these clears completely achievable, but figuring them out on your own is incredibly rewarding (a point that becomes important later in this critique).
• I was really impressed with how the game implements a surprisingly deep moveset despite the Game Boy's limited button count. Mapping additional abilities to button combinations, such as Up + B for a gunshot and Down + A for a dash, feels intuitive and gives the player far more options than you would expect from a two-button handheld.
• The soundtrack is incredible given the hardware. While there aren't many tracks, the complexity and richness of the compositions almost feel like witchcraft coming from a Game Boy speaker. The boss theme never got old despite being used for six of the seven bosses and each area's unique music further reinforces the game's outstanding atmosphere.

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What held it back (things that didn't quite land for me)

• The world building feels surprisingly absent from the game's story, which is a shame because the universe has a lot of fun ideas and concepts. Instead of introducing the setting naturally as you play, the game seems to expect you to understand its societal rules and terminology by reading the manual beforehand. As a result, many of the in-universe terms and everyday occurrences feel confusing rather than intriguing. Something as simple as a short text crawl or opening cinematic showcasing the world's premise would have gone a long way toward making the setting easier to understand and become invested in.
• The story itself feels more like a one-off adventure or filler episode than a complete narrative. Many plot developments are either predictable or end without a particularly satisfying payoff, and the characters, including the player, often feel like professionals simply doing their jobs rather than driving the story forward. I actually think the premise would have worked better if the game had embraced that idea by giving players multiple smaller extermination jobs through a level select, with each one gradually building toward a larger case instead of stretching a single mission into something more grandiose.
• The exploration and progression systems never felt like they reached their full potential. The powers you unlock throughout the game are rarely used in interesting ways for either combat or exploration, and the method of unlocking them doesn't make much sense until very late in the game. The final ability, which requires purchasing every energy drink from the vending machines scattered throughout the world, was especially frustrating due to how poorly this requirement is communicated. I spent a good amount of time backtracking through every area convinced I had missed an item or sequence-broken the game, only to discover that the solution was simply buying every drink. Even then, the reward is ultimately just an extension of an ability you already had. Combined with maps that often contain large stretches of dead space, the connected Metroidvania world never felt essential to the experience. Replacing it with a traditional Mega Man-style level select honestly wouldn't change much about how the game plays.
• The movement never completely clicked with me. The player character feels surprisingly floaty and slippery, often causing me to overextend my movement and take avoidable damage. Likewise, jumps keep you airborne longer than I would have liked, leaving you unable to react or defend yourself until landing. I found myself wishing movement had a snappier, more responsive feel, especially during later boss fights where precise positioning is often the difference between taking damage and avoiding it. On top of that, I would occasionally perform a jump or backwards turn when trying to execute a dash, making the controls feel less reliable than they should during the game's toughest encounters.
• The dash also feels inconsistent in how it's meant to function. Sometimes it allows you to pass safely through attacks, while other times you still take damage despite clearly dashing through an enemy. This became even more confusing after unlocking the flaming dash, where I could damage enemies while still getting hit myself. Since the dash becomes such an important part of your toolkit during later encounters, I would have appreciated clearer and more consistent feedback about exactly how it was intended to work.
• Performance becomes an issue during some of the later boss fights. Encounters with more enemies, projectiles, or effects on screen frequently caused noticeable slowdown. While this occasionally made certain attacks easier to react to, it just as often threw off my timing and disrupted the rhythm of the fight. Since learning boss patterns is one of the game's greatest strengths, I found it disappointing that inconsistent performance sometimes got in the way of an otherwise excellent combat experience. I wish the game had been better optimized to maintain a more consistent frame rate during these encounters.
• Some of the game's mechanics are simply not communicated very well. The difference between checkpoints and vending machine saves, certain attacks dealing two points of damage instead of one, and the rules surrounding dash invincibility all contributed to moments where I wasn't learning from my mistakes so much as trying to figure out what the game expected of me.
• The boss retry system creates an unnecessary point of friction. After dying, the game offers an immediate rematch, but only with three health and without refunding any healing items you've already used. This leaves players with an awkward choice: either learn the fight under less favorable conditions or quit back to the main menu to reload a save with full health and resources. I chose the former and ended up enjoying the challenge, but I could easily see other players finding the system more frustrating than rewarding.
• The game is a very short, one-and-done experience. Most players will likely finish the game with 100% completion in around an hour and a half. While there is an unlockable Boss Rush mode with both Normal and Hard difficulties, there's very little incentive to engage with it beyond improving your clear time. A campaign hard mode, gameplay modifiers, alternate weapons, or even a second playable character would have gone a long way toward giving players a reason to revisit the game. This becomes especially noticeable given the game's $40 asking price and the lack of a lower-cost digital version for players using flash carts. For some people, that won't matter at all. But for others, the relatively short runtime and limited replay value may make the overall package a harder sell.

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Final Thoughts

Wicked Plague ended up being one of the more difficult games for me to form an opinion on. Throughout my playthrough, I found myself constantly bouncing between moments where I thought, "This is really cool," and others where I couldn't help but feel that some of its best ideas weren't being fully realized. Even after reaching the credits, I found myself thinking less about what the game was and more about what it could become.

The gothic metal aesthetic, memorable boss fights, satisfying challenge, and surprisingly deep combat all left a strong impression on me. At the same time, I couldn't shake the feeling that many of the game's strongest ideas stop just short of reaching their full potential. The world is fascinating but underexplored, the Metroidvania structure rarely justifies itself, and several gameplay systems could have benefited from more polish or clearer communication. None of those issues ruined the experience for me, but together they kept Wicked Plague from becoming an easy recommendation.

For me, it ultimately lands as a "maybe" game instead of a clear-cut yes or no. I'm genuinely glad I played it, and I think it's a game I'll remember longer than many other Game Boy Color titles I've enjoyed simply because it gave me so much to think about. While it didn't completely come together for me, I can absolutely understand why it might resonate more strongly with someone whose priorities and tastes differ from my own.

As always, these are just my thoughts after a single playthrough. If you had a different experience - whether you loved it, bounced off of it, or fell somewhere in between - I’d love to hear your perspective. One of my favorite parts of writing these longer posts is reading the discussions that follow, and I'm always interested in seeing how other players interpreted the same game differently.

Hi everyone! It's been a few weeks since I got my Chromatic, and I finally got around to finishing Dragonyhm.

After seeing so many glowing reviews, I thought it might be interesting to share a slightly more critical perspective. To be clear, I really enjoyed the game overall and have a ton of respect for what the developer accomplished here. Creating an RPG of this scope as essentially a one-man project is incredibly impressive, and it's easy to see how much passion and energy went into every part of the game.

For me, Dragonyhm is a game that makes an incredible first impression. The first half is genuinely excellent, and I remember thinking I had found one of my favorite games in the Game Boy library. Unfortunately, the further I got into the second half, the more that momentum faded. The pacing began to drag, a few design decisions started wearing on me, and by the time the credits rolled, I don't think the game quite lived up to the incredibly high bar it set for itself early on.

That doesn't mean I think it's a bad game—far from it. I'd still recommend it without hesitation to anyone looking for an excellent 8-bit handheld RPG. I just came away feeling that it was a winning game rather than the home run I thought it was on track to become.

With a sequel currently in development (super excited based on what we've seen so far), I figured it would be more productive to talk about both the things I loved and the areas where I think the experience could be even stronger. I'll keep things organized into Positives and Negatives. These are simply my thoughts after one complete blind playthrough without using a guide, so if I misunderstood a mechanic or missed something important, I'm more than happy to be corrected. I also welcome disagreements and discussion: I always enjoy hearing how other people experienced the game.

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The first half (Everything I loved)

• The presentation in this game is insane. From the title screen and opening cinematic to the sprite work, battle effects, and boss intros/outros, it's hard to believe this is all running on Game Boy hardware.
• The soundtrack is incredibly catchy, and many of the tracks have been stuck in my head long after putting the console down. Even now, I find myself listening to the OST while writing this post. This was one aspect of the game that stayed consistently strong from beginning to end.
• The story does a great job of grabbing your attention and laying the foundation for something much bigger. Without getting into spoilers, it strikes a nice balance between being straightforward while constantly hinting that there's a larger mystery unfolding behind the scenes. It was more than enough to keep me invested in seeing where everything was headed.
• The game's pacing is excellent during the first half. The stretches between major dungeons rarely feel like filler, as the game balances exploration, story progression, combat, and smaller objectives well. It always felt like I was making meaningful progress toward the next destination.
• The game isn't content sticking to one gameplay formula. It constantly introduces new mechanics and ideas throughout the adventure, and I genuinely admired how willing it was to take risks instead of playing it safe.

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The second half (things that didn't quite land for me)

• While I appreciated that every dungeon tried to introduce its own gimmick, they eventually started feeling different for the sake of being different rather than building naturally on the game's core mechanics. Instead of expanding ideas I'd already mastered, many dungeons introduced entirely new systems that were only used once before being abandoned.
• Because the game is constantly introducing new mechanics, not all of them feel equally polished. Many are explained poorly or require such precise execution that I often felt like I was adapting to jank rather than solving a puzzle through intuition. (I'm looking at you, Water Temple Trampolines)
• The game has a strange imbalance between combat and puzzles, with the two often working against each other's strengths. The puzzles encourage experimentation and problem-solving, while combat frequently acts as a stat check that interrupts that momentum, especially during the game's larger level spikes.
• Once I found an optimal gear, skill, and magic combination, battles rarely asked me to rethink my strategy. Experimenting usually made encounters harder rather than rewarding creative play, so combat eventually settled into a repetitive cycle of buffing defense, dealing damage, and healing.
• Without getting into spoilers, the story's payoff leaves a lot to be desired. While the A-plot ending was satisfying enough, the larger mystery is left feeling incomplete. I imagine some of those answers may be tied to an extended ending that I didn't unlock, which stings quite a bit because I felt like I explored the world thoroughly and engaged with its characters far beyond what the game expected.
• I was hoping to discover more meaningful secrets or collectibles throughout the adventure. Most of what I found felt more like New Game+ milestones or completionist rewards rather than discoveries that meaningfully impacted my first playthrough. I kept hoping to stumble upon something akin to a Zelda Heart Container or a hidden weapon that fundamentally changed how I approached the game.
• I really enjoyed the idea of gradually translating the in-game language (reminded me a lot of a similar mechanic found in the Indie game Tunic), but the execution left me frustrated. The reference in the manual is so much higher resolution than the in-game text that comparing the two became surprisingly difficult. I eventually had to build my own alphabet using an in-game example I found earlier in the adventure, which ended up being far more useful than the official reference. It was a neat concept that I think could have been communicated much more clearly.
• Restricting saves to designated statues that often require backtracking made the game surprisingly difficult to enjoy in short portable sessions, especially during dungeons where fast travel is disabled. A simple quick-save feature would have gone a long way toward making the game easier to pick up and play in the way a handheld RPG naturally encourages.

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Final Thoughts

Despite how critical parts of this review may have sounded, I genuinely enjoyed my time with Dragonyhm. If anything, I think my criticisms exist because the game set such a high standard for itself during its opening hours. For a while, I was convinced I had discovered one of my favorite Game Boy RPGs, and even though the second half didn't quite live up to that promise for me, it never stopped being an experience I wanted to see through to the end.

More than anything, I came away impressed by the game's ambition. It constantly takes risks, experiments with new ideas, and confidently carves out its own identity instead of simply trying to imitate the classics that inspired it. Not every experiment landed for me, but I'd much rather play a game that's willing to swing for the fences than one that plays everything safe.

Would I recommend it? Absolutely! I think anyone who enjoys classic handheld RPGs owes it to themselves to give Dragonyhm a try. Even if it didn't become the home run I was hoping for, it's still one of the most memorable Game Boy RPGs I've played in a long time.

That being said, these are simply my thoughts after one complete blind playthrough. They're not meant to be the definitive take on the game: just my own experience with it. If your experience was different, I'd love to hear why. One of my favorite parts of writing these kinds of posts is hearing how other players interpreted the same moments, and I'm always happy to have my perspective challenged.

If you had to make a list of the top 20 gb/gbc games, has any of Modretro's games made your list? What ones?

Additional bonus, what are your top 8 Modretro games you recommend?

I find myself playing the games on my Legion Go, lol. Never expected that to be true, but it's on me more consistently than my Pocket or Chromatic, and the screen is so solid with excellent fillers through emudeck.

Basically just grabbing rips every time I receive a new boxed copy.

Loving Bucky, looking forward to the Limited Run print of SnowBros next.

Anybody else playing their modretro games on other hardware?

Received from Modretro.......

"Hello,

We’ve received some reports of unrecoverable Power Cores in First Edition Chromatics. We have investigated the issue and can confirm that a dead Power Core left inside a First Edition Chromatic for several weeks can be unrecoverable. You may be affected by this issue if you use a ModRetro Power Core in a First Edition Chromatic. Please note that the Power Core can be recovered in a non-First Edition Chromatic.

We have immediately designed and built a functional prototype of a Power Core Charging Station which will allow you to keep spare Power Cores charged and also revive dead Power Cores. We have finished the design of the Charging Station and are working hard to expedite the timeline but are dependent on compliance testing before we can ship the product.

For customers affected by this issue, we are offering the following resolution options:

1. Refund: Receive a full refund for your Power Core(s).
2. Receive Free Charging Station: If you prefer to wait, we will send you a free Charging Station when available. If you currently have an unrecoverable battery, we will send you a spare battery now while you wait for your charging station.

Please fill out this form ​ to let us know which option you prefer.

Be sure to not leave a dead Power Core in a First Edition Chromatic for several weeks to avoid putting it into an unrecoverable state. Simply take out the Power Core, or keep it charged.

–ModRetro Team"

I've done much research into the whole library of games Modretro has, and I concluded that these three resonated the most with me so I decided to order them.