Antivirus PROTOCOL just dropped on Steam today—and nope, I don’t like it.
Picture Asteroids, except you don’t shoot. The game shoots for you. And no matter what you do, you’re going to die. The only way forward is dying over and over, farming resources, and unlocking upgrades in a giant skill tree. That’s not skill. That’s persistence disguised as design.
The devs pitch it as “an incremental game about destroying viruses.” Sure—you collect data, upgrade yourself, and eventually take down bosses. Sounds good on paper. In practice, it’s just hanging around long enough for numbers to go up.
I’ve played idlers. I enjoy them. But as a shooter? Nope. It feels like an experiment that should have stayed a web demo—because that’s exactly where it came from. Built in Godot, originally on itch, and padded out into a $5 Steam debut by FIREHIVE Games.
Presentation? Way overcooked. I love 2D sprites and CRT filters. But this is every bad stereotype of “arcade aesthetic” crammed into one screen. Flashy red virus blobs, glitch text everywhere, fake scanlines—it’s exhausting.
At least the music has some chiptune charm, and the sound effects land with decent punch.
Controls are mouse only. No keyboard. No gamepad. Just drag your little ship around until you’re sick of it. It’s as barebones as control schemes get.
Specs are featherweight—Windows 10, a 2GHz CPU, 2GB RAM, 100MB disk. It even runs fine on Linux through Proton, though part of me wishes I hadn’t tested that.
Twelve reviews in, sitting around 90% positive. But I honestly don’t know what those people are playing, because I couldn’t stand it. Maybe they’re seduced by the promise of cloud saves and endless upgrade loops. Me? I see a one-note design that mistakes repetition for depth.
Intro price is C$5.84 with a launch discount. My advice? Don’t buy it. Quarantine it.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/3716650/Antivirus_PROTOCOL/
Out of curiosity, which idlers have you played and enjoyed? I play a lot of them (hell, I have a re-play of Progress Knight Quest running in another tab right now if that tells you what kind of person I am) and I have to say your gameplay criticisms sound pretty on-track for the genre. Hanging around long enough for numbers to go up then prestiging when you hit a wall where things become impossible to progress, and persistence disguised as design in place of skill all sounds about right. This one sounds pretty standard just with a more dynamic presentation.
I’m not saying you’re wrong or anything, sometimes things just don’t land for someone and that’s cool, there are a bunch of super popular idle/incremental games that I absolutely can’t stand. Thanks for the post, I hadn’t heard of this one before.
We’d love to have you at !incremental_games@incremental.social. check out the instance and Cinny chat.
There was short idle game with a similar aesthetic that was in my Steam recommendations all the time that looked like this screenshot but wasn’t this game.
Trying to find it.It is Nodebuster, similar aesthetic.Will keep away from Antivirus PROTOCOL.
I have an account on incremental.social specifically for !incremental_games@incremental.social, sadly the instance often has issues
