Game Boy Color roguelike Corporate Rot hits Kickstarter October 26

Indie developer MetagameMike is launching a Kickstarter campaign for Corporate Rot alongside a playable public demo on October 26, 2026. First announced in September after development began back in February, the project is a top-down action roguelike built for the Game Boy Color, Analogue Pocket, and PC.

You play as a timid, hard-working office employee who realizes her building has been overrun by zombies. Her only route out is fighting down to the ground-floor lobby, clearing one infected floor at a time.

Beating zombies with a CRT monitor

Because corporate HR generally frowns on bringing broadswords to a cubicle, combat relies entirely on improvised office equipment. Players pick up heavy CRT monitors, rolling chairs, and staplers to bludgeon the undead across each floor. Even the breakroom piñata can be smashed open for leftover candy when a run goes sideways, which is probably the most realistic depiction of office morale boost ever put on an 8-bit cartridge.

Progression between floors revolves around micro-levels and breakroom vending machines that dispense upgrades for the climb down. Fast-paced roguelikes are a tall order for the Game Boy Color and its 8-bit Sharp LR35902 processor, and I'm curious to see how smoothly the screen handles a crowded room of shambling coworkers when the demo drops on Monday. It's a busy season for Nintendo's 1998 handheld, following recent projects like Gumball in Trick-or-Treat Land and the new physical cartridge run for R-Type DX.

Frogs, cats, and bartending birds

Bedsole isn't new to the hardware. An animator and illustrator by trade, he has already completed three smaller Game Boy projects that are available on his itch.io page, built using the homebrew toolset GB Studio.

His biggest completed release to date is Kero Kero Cowboy, a cartoony western platformer for the Game Boy Color and Analogue Pocket that was also crowdfunded on Kickstarter. That game sells digitally for $9.99 (with a free browser demo available), received a physical cartridge run, and recently got an update on October 7 adding RetroAchievements support to the GBC ROM.

Before the western platformer, Bedsole made two bite-sized original Game Boy arcade games that you can play directly in a browser. Birdie Bartender is a short bartending simulator, while Sushi Gun is an action-arcade game about firing sushi into the mouths of hungry cats.

Trading cute frogs and well-fed felines for workplace undead is a fun pivot, though Bedsole's background as an animator still shows in the expressive sprite work. If you want to test the combat before backing a cartridge or digital ROM tier, the demo goes live alongside the crowdfunding page on October 26.