Thanks to Ratalaika Games for the review code
Title: Scurge: Hive
System: Nintendo Switch (eShop)
Price: $14.99
Release Date: 10/10/2025
Story
In this isometric action adventure game, you take control of Jenosa, who must investigate a strange laboratory containing an alien entity known as the Scurge Virus, and how she must stop the wild spread of it all over the laboratory, and prevent it from going further out of control!
This game is an interesting one, being a late era GBA game from Orbital Media, an indie dev from the GBA/DS era. There are dialogue scenes here and some background information that you find as you progress through the laboratory’s zones, but nothing too engrossing. There is a Japanese translation here for the very first time ever, if that happens to interest you.
Presentation
The usual modern Shinyuden/Ratalaika wrapper returns. Same deal as always, with rewind/fast forward running better on the Switch 2 than the OG switch, where fast forward doesn’t play as nicely. The filters return including the fine LCD filter that does an OK enough job, and yet again you have a bunch of scanned material like box art and manuals, although these are all edited to the point of absurdity and are yet again, very low quality scans.
Interestingly enough, there’s no sound test option in the UI menu, even though the game itself has a varied OST with enough tracks to fill one out. The game itself looks pretty solid for a GBA game, but the isometric perspective does make it pretty tricky to tell depth perception and how far away the platforms are from one another, making platforming rather annoying. The music is likewise fine, and the sound effects are pretty generic.
Gameplay
In Scurge Hive, you control Jenosa as she embarks to several different parts of a laboratory to discover and take out the sources of the Scurge Virus, while trying to figure out how to completely rid the laboratory of it once and for all. The best way to sum up this game would be as if you had an Isometric Zelda/Metroid Fusion, since the game does have you gaining upgrades over time, but you go from one area to the next in a linear fashion, with a main “hub” area connecting each zone that you’ll slowly open up more as you gain the different upgrades.
Jenosa’s main weaponry is a special gauntlet that shoots elemental shots. Each shot has a rate of firing where you’ll have to wait a lil while once it dries up, but by and large these do a fine enough job at taking out enemies, with some elements doing more damage to certain enemies, while other elements might cause the same enemy to gain an attack boost and be immune from damage. Swapping between the gauntlet shots is as easy at using the R button, and they’re all fairly fun to play around with and some even help out with puzzle solving.
Exploration is fairly solid, since while the areas are sorta linear, there’s still some amount of freedom to poke around, whether that is by finding key cards in a semi-free order, or by turning on power stations to power up a Nexus teleporter. While you’re exploring, you have a slow percentage meter increasing over time, indicating exposure to the Scurge. When it hits 100%, you’ll start taking damage until you die unless you go to a save point and purify yourself, so you will have to pop back in every now and then and avoid loitering around for too long.
The bosses are pretty enjoyable too, taking good advantage of the isometric perspective and making good use of the upgrades you gain over the adventure, and are rather fun to fight. I can’t say the same for the normal enemies and platforming, though. While the elemental system makes standard enemies easier to deal with, aiming at smaller foes is still a pain, and the isometric platforming gets really obnoxious the further you get in the game, especially when it comes to determining distance. Thankfully, this has the usual Ratalaika Rewind option, and the platforming is by far the aspect you’ll likely need it for the most, and with that rough edge smoothed out, the game becomes a lot less aggravating.
Conclusion
Scurge Hive might just be the trickiest Ratalaika reissue I’ve covered to date. One of the longest games they’ve reissued, and an intriguing take on the metroidvania format, Scurge Hive is a decently fun time, with the rewind feature helping to mitigate the otherwise infuriating platforming that drags down a game that’s otherwise pretty solid for a GBA action game.
The different abilities are fun to play around with, the bosses are pretty enjoyable to fight, and overall you have a solid GBA gem being brought back out again in the usual Ratalaika fashion. With extra unlockable difficulties to play with, there’s also merit in playing this more than once if Scurge happens to really click with you, and while this game will absolutely never compare to a real Zelda or Metroid, it isn’t a bad imitator of either, and is a pretty cool love letter I had fun with.
I give Scurge: Hive a 7 out of 10.