As 2023 turned into 2024, Steamboat Willie, the original Mickey Mouse cartoon, entered the public domain. Hours after the announcement, game developer Nightmare Forge Games announced a new survival horror title riffing on the 100-year-old cartoon, Infestation 88.
While the game received wide coverage immediately after its announcement, there are several red flags. The game has an anonymous development team with little public footprint, and it appears to be made with purchased 3D assets as well as robotic-sounding dialogue generated using an AI-driven text-to-speech service. Additionally, a confluence of common Nazi reference points (“88” can mean H.H. or heil Hitler, as well as references to “vermin” and the gameplay of gassing humanoid rats) has led some commenters to view the game with suspicion.
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Infestation 88’s Steam page bills the game as a co-op survival horror game for 1-4 players. It’s set in the year 1988 and you play as a member of a team of exterminators called out to treat a mysterious infestation. The trailer includes strange pulsing nests, lots of rats, and a nightmarish version of Steamboat-era Mickey.
This kind of thing was inevitable—a beloved character’s entrance into the public domain is always met with a wash of low-effort remixes. Last year gave us Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey, the low budget horror film based on the famous sweet toothed cartoon bear, and a similar Mickey-based horror film is slated for this year.
Infestation 88 fits right into this mold. Nightmare Forge Game’s website is barebones, but the company describes itself as “a team of industry veterans who have specialized in creating horror games since 2010.”
Nightmare Forge Games told Motherboard that it’s keeping their identities secret because of the large amount of attention they’ve received. “We’re choosing not to disclose our identities at this time for the sake of maintaining privacy,” the company said in an email.
Infestation 88 bears the hallmarks of so-called “shovelware,” or an asset flip. Shovelware games are built quickly and cheaply using purchasable assets from places like the Unity store. A quick search through the asset store turned up some objects that look remarkably similar to what’s in the Infestation 88 trailer. Its giant rat monster looks a lot like this WereRat. The smaller rats appear to come from one of the many packs of cheap rats available in the store.
“As an indie studio, we do rely on some purchased assets from the Unreal and Unity stores,” Nightmare Forge Games told Motherboard. “However, there is a lot of work going into this project that we’re hopeful will be evident upon release.”
The voice-over also seems to be made using AI, rather than by hiring voice actors. ElevenLabs is a text-to-speech service that allows anyone to type in a small bit of dialogue and churn out voice lines for free. Users pick a style in a drown down menu, type in their dialogue, and get a reading of it within seconds. If your text block is under 333 characters, you can use the service for free. Infestation 88’s voice-over is just 325 characters, and it sounds a lot like the ElevenLabs voice named “Clyde.”
Nightmare Forge Said it used a premium version of the service but it planned to hire real voice actors in the future. “Given this was an initial announcement trailer, and due to time constraints, we did utilize a premium version of Elevenlabs AI as a placeholder until we hire real voice actors for the actual in-game voice narrations,” it said.
The name is also an odd choice. The number 88 is a well known neo-Nazi symbol, although Nightmare Forge Games told Kotaku it wasn’t aware of that. “Our game is set in the 1980s, with the year 1988 being chosen simply for its symmetrical design in our game’s artwork,” it said. “Therefore, the 88 strictly represents the year 1988; no additional connotations are intended. We are in the process of revising this artwork to clarify the abbreviation, as shown in the image below. Should there still be concerns, we’re open to changing the game’s name.”
Nightmare Forge Games has since changed the name of Infestation 88 to Infestation: Origins and updated its Steam page. “Unfortunately, we were unaware of any additional meaning the number ‘88 has,” the developers said on its Discord server. “We apologize for our ignorance on this and appreciate that this was brought to our attention so we could address it ASAP!”
Nightmare Forge told Motherboard the game wouldn’t, strictly, be about Mickey Mouse. “The 1928 Steamboat Willie animation short entering the public domain has allowed us to include our own derivation of the film’s starring character in our game, which fits perfectly as an antagonist causing an infestation,” it said. “However, rather than focusing on any one particular antagonist, the game will include multiple twisted versions of classic characters and urban legends. For example, another infestation players will need to overcome is caused by the Mothman, inspired by the urban legend popularized in West Virginian folklore.”
Mickey Mouse couldn’t live in Disney’s house forever. He was, at a certain point, always going to enter the public domain. Disney’s iron grip on the IP didn’t mean that people couldn’t riff, mock, and satirize the mouse. People did that for decades without the tacit approval of the U.S. copyright office.
What’s different now is that people can legally charge people when they remix the mouse. That means there’s going to be a lot of crude, and quickly done, Mickey Mouse content in our future.
UPDATE 1/2/24 at 2:53PM: This story has been updated with information about the game’s name change.
