About this game
You are a process inside someone else's machine. You write X into its memory, the system answers with O. Line up three marks and the line detonates: they burn, the hostile process takes damage. Four in a row hits almost twice as hard, five hits three times. The board does not end in a draw. It reloads.
Twenty cards, each with an upgraded form. Hover one over the board and you see exactly what will change. No guesswork.
Thirty modules across six schools, and only eight slots. ECHO leaves a mark standing after a blast, INFECTION flips nearby enemy marks, CHAIN REACTOR doubles the cascade bonus. Two or three together become a mechanism.
Eight sectors, the grid grows from 4x4 to 6x6. Twenty hostile processes and six bosses with faces built from characters. Anomalies rewrite the rules of a sector.
A run takes 30-50 minutes. The terminal waited nine thousand four hundred and twelve days for an operator, and it notices that you keep coming back.
How to play
Played with the mouse. Pick a card on the right, then a cell on the board.
Hover the selected card over the board: bright cells will change for sure, dim cells are within range but empty.
Three of your marks in a row - horizontal, vertical or diagonal - detonate and hit the hostile process. The marks burn away and free their cells. The longer the line, the harder the hit.
The process places its own O marks and builds lines too. Its blasts take your integrity. Lose all integrity and the run is over.
Your turn ends when you run out of actions. If there is nothing to play, press Skip turn.
After each sector take a card or a module. They will not all fit: eight slots for thirty modules, so something has to be left behind.
Keys: 1-5 pick a card from hand, Esc cancels the selection and opens the menu. The "how this works" button on the left is a reference for every card and symbol.