itch.io

Thanks for playing! The writing was an afterthought and was done in the last moment, so it might really be confusing, sorry about that. One thing that could help in this case is to talk to both sides in the dreamspace, you might see a different perspective. The whole plot (which we’ve tried to communicate via dialogues) is that you found a dark spot in the network and that this spot is occupied by a facility. The whole facility was built and driven by a super-human AI some time ago in order to use humans as resources by placing them in capsules (you can see them in the meatspace all the time, the green ones are occupied, the empty ones on the rails are for future victims) and then placing them in the dreamspace, so they’ll be happy and driven, so the AI can harvest their mind state. But those dreamspaces lacked detail and creativity and when AI discovered an alien conscience fungus it captured it, connected it to the system and used its consciousness to improve dreamspaces. That worked only partially, as that fungus was able to produce some of its kind in the meatspace, capturing physical space in the facility, so AI retracted to the cyberspace and was only able to hold it ground there and partially in dreamspaces. Fungus, being a prisoner, tried to ruin dreamspaces and produced some monsters in there with limited success. This is where you come in and either help get rid of the fungus in the dreamspaces (effectively severing some of the control that fungus have on dreamspaces and limiting its abilities), or you help fungus by eliminating occupants of those dreamspaces, who are humans in those capsules, effectively straining AI of its power even more. Those two sides play you as their puppet as they only open passages in spaces they don’t live in (fungus in the cyberspace and AI in the meatspace), so you need to eliminate some of the forces of the other ones. When you finish with the last dreamspace you are actually captured in the dreamspace yourself, which looks almost identical to your world, but that’s another story :D We ran out of time and were unable to write 4 different ending texts or an ending level, so we decided to leave only one. We’ve initially planned to have different endings depending on whom you helped, so if you only helped fungus you’ll end up destroying the AI and leaving the facility, if you’ve helped only the AI you’re in the dreamspace with no way to escape, if you helped fungus at least once then you’re in different dreamspace and have an option to find fungus emissary and escape.

Thanks for the feedback! I’ll check out if we can figure out how to fix iframe container, it might only be an issue on big resolutions.