Developer Mike Klubnika continues to develop the lore of his cruel near-future dystopia in which the Torment Nexus has been realized in this short game, following on from 2024’s much acclaimed Buckshot Roulette. Over the course of this 30-40 minute vignette, you are placed in the shoes of an engineer trying to sabotage a malevolent superstructure by running commands on your retro-future terminal, using real Linux inputs to move around the system and manipulate files.
Despite almost the entire game taking place in front of computer screens, there are strong nuggets of worldbuilding that emerge as you scheme with Alice and Vincent on the terminal’s rudimentary chat program. A certain amount of technical competency is assumed, so while not as universally appealing as Buckshot Roulette, it demands your attention and allows you to get invested in the situation and characters before the dark final act takes hold.
In the last few minutes, the challenge morphs from problem-solving to keyboard dexterity. You frantically type out words and passages that are in turn despairing, (“Betrayal”), foreboding (“The trucks are here”) and desperate (“THE DRILL IS FUCKING DEAD”) as the game races towards its terrible, inevitable conclusion.
In typical Klubnika fashion, the game raises more questions than it answers. Who are Ketas Electronics? What is the ‘centrifuge’? We can only sit and wait for the next horrifying instalment.