Intro

"The I is for Infected" is a turn-based RPG developed by anyon175 using RPG Maker 2000 that was created for the Theme Roulette event held back in 2018. Though oddly enough this game wasn't posted here until a few days ago which makes me wonder if anyon175 wasn't particularly proud of this project or if he didn't finish in time. After all, it seems a bit weird to participate in a site event and not post your work if one of those propositions isn't true. Though, I suppose such speculation is rather pointless so I should focus on the narrative, but I want to talk about how to get the game running first.

Getting the Game to Run

Getting "The I is for Infected" to run isn't that difficult. For whatever reason the developer forgot to include the harmony.dll file in the download. So you just need to copy it from another game that was made with RPG Maker 2000 such as "Chase for Divinity" and post it inside the game's primary folder after you've uncompressed it.

Story
Summary

You start the game out as Alex whose recruited a shady doctor to help his relatives who've been feeling under the weather since you've returned from your heroic journey. A journey that involved defeating a demon king with a really long name in a realm that is overhyped as far as I'm concerned. At any rate after you've defeated a wolfman outside your home we switch over to controlling the shady doctor as he tries to diagnosis your relatives. A process that involves going into combat in one case and is a lengthy cut scene in the other. Unfortunately after your sister has been tended to the Demon King decides to make an appearance and utterly slaughters the hero in short order since the combat system is partially luck based. So taking him down requires a combination of good strategy and pure luck as far as I can tell, but if you manage to reach the end the Demon King decides to team up with the hero in order to put an end to the "Viruz" the new threat that is even greater than himself.

Spelling Errors

Considering the developer's profile mentions that he is a Brazilian dude I'm guessing English isn't anyon175's first language, but the game contains several spelling errors. A few of them are repeated multiple times which makes me wonder if they were meant to be part of a joke like the doctor saying "decease" instead of disease. After all, he is a shady doctor, but the doctor's descriptor also changes to wise at times as well.

Comedy

I'll admit I didn't find any of the jokes in this game particularly funny from the hero mentioning that he and his family live in a house they apparently stole to the Demon King's "ironic" jokes about putting an end to all evil. Well an end to all evil if you ignore him at least. As for why the jokes don't work. I lay the blame for that mostly on most of these jokes being really old and played out such as Alex getting bored with the doctor's explanations because they contain big words.

Gameplay

The game only contains one real fight in my opinion. This is the fight between Alex and the Demon King since all of the other "battles" in this game serve as tutorials. As such there's little reason to talk about them since the game essentially holds your hand through the entire match. So much so that it made me think of the opening duel for the "Pokémon Trading Card Game" on the Game Boy Color. As for the battle with the demon king. It's a pretty difficult battle since the demon king gets multiple attacks. As for a winning strategy for this fight. My best advice is to cast heal on yourself at the start and then try and counter the demon king's attacks until you can see the slime on his head. Though lasting long enough to see the slime is a bit of a toss up for two reasons. For starters the counter skill only activates successfully 70 percent of the time which means your going to take several hits while waiting. And some of these hits are so big they'll effectively put you at death's door. So lasting long enough to win this fight is entirely luck dependent which is super annoying in my opinion.

This is made even worse by the fact you can't save before the fight with the demon king. At best you can save before treating the hero's sister. And even if you do that you'll still have to go through two to three minutes worth of cut scenes before you can engage the demon king again. And if you didn't save at any point during this game you'll have to go through over 15 minutes worth of content all over again in order to engage in this luck based battle again. As for suggestions on how to improve this battle. I'd suggest toning down how many attacks the demon king gets to one or two moves since he easily does more damage than you'll get back from using a high potion. In fact, the demon king usually inflicts more damage in a single round than you can get back with a high potion and a level II healing spell in play since the heal spells in this game give the player health recovery over multiple turns.

Graphics & Sound

As far as I can tell the game largely relies on the RTP for RPG Maker 2000 for both of these aspects. As such this game really doesn't have a unique identity in these areas and just ends up feeling like a lot of other games that were made with RPG Maker 2000. On the bright side there isn't anything worth with the RTP, but it does get a bit old seeing the same tiles and hearing the same songs all the time.



And the map showing off the hero's house is pretty ugly in my opinion due to the overuse of tree and bush tiles around it. And the hero's house isn't much better in my opinion since it contains a noticeable amount of wasted space that is devoted to grey floor tiles.



Conclusion

"The I is for Infected" is a short comedy game that just feels dead on arrival as far as I'm concerned. Add in a final battle that is highly luck based and your left with a game that is both boring to get through and frustrating to complete. In fact, my Let's Play for this game just features the bad ending where the hero dies. Albeit I was able to clear this battle on my third attempt when I wasn't recording and the true ending doesn't save this one in my opinion. As such my recommendation for others is to just skip this game since there are way better games on this site that feature turn-based combat.