Metroidbrainia
Progression is gated by what you understand, not what you grind. Learn IP math, deduce network topologies, master terminal syntax — your own knowledge is the only real key in the network.
$ connect --world-wide-wonder
A Wild West built on salvaged tech.
ServerBound
A top-down cybersecurity investigation RPG where the internet is a place you walk — and you are the one who learned how it actually works.
The old Internet is gone — drowned when the mega-corporations handed it to AI. What’s left is the World Wide Wonder: a salvaged, human-built network stitched together across Sector INT-4589/ABF. A frontier of duct-tape tech, where every town is a server cluster and every monster is a process doing exactly what it was told.
You play a Purple-team netrunner — equal parts attacker and defender — moving node to node through a procedurally generated topology. Combat isn’t a brawl; it’s an investigation. Probe a daemon, read its logs, fingerprint its weakness, then compile the single exploit that unmakes it.
It’s a Metroidbrainia: nothing gates your progress except your own understanding of how the network really works.
SYS.PILLARS
[DESIGN PILLARS]
Six systems. One investigation.
Investigative Combat
No health bars. Time pauses; you probe and fingerprint a daemon to expose its archetype, trigger, and weakness, then compile the one payload that actually counters it. Arco-style simultaneous resolution.
The Diegetic Terminal
The UI is the character. A slide-up terminal and draggable OS windows; real commands — arpspoof, ssh, scp, kill -9 — do real work. No radial menus, no inventory scrolls.
A World of Two States
Cross the dark Veil as a ghost in hostile cyberspace. Open the terminal and the world tilts, zooms, and ignites into the Focus diorama. Seizing control literally lights the world.
Factions & Trust
Every Accord aligns to the cybersecurity colour wheel. Reputation is an SSL-style web of trust: earn a faction’s signature and doors open; get caught and you land on their revocation list.
No Ctrl+Z
The world has no undo. A reckless kill -9 on an innocent process, a ransomware timer you let run out — that data is gone for good. Precision is the difficulty curve.
[VERTICAL SLICE]
Anatomy of a hack
One node, start to finish — captured from the working prototype.
- 01
Jack into a node
// INT-4589 / ABF — node 10.45.100.x
Connect to an IP and the map drops you into a top-down pixel world. Firewalls are walls, databases are vaults, malware wears a body. This is the Veil: a near-black cyberspace where blue server buildings and hostile daemons glow as thin neon glyphs.
-
02Get a foothold
arpspoof -i eth0 -t gateway.local
Hit the gateway and the terminal slides up — the world brightens into the Focus diorama. Poison the ARP cache and every packet routes through you. It works, but ARP storms are loud: your detection meter spikes, and the node starts watching back.
-
03Loot the flank
scp 10.45.100.9:/backups/id_rsa .
Information is asymmetry. Pull an id_rsa off a database silo and you have SSH credentials for the AUTH server — a cheap flank you can take without cracking anything under fire. Every command is a real technique doing a real thing.
-
04Fingerprint the threat
fingerprint Ransomware_X
Investigation is the study; combat is the exam. Fingerprinting reveals the archetype — ransomware.elite — its trigger (a dead-man’s switch: a raw kill -9 detonates it) and its weakness (isolate, then terminate). Now you know how to win before the fight begins.
-
05Engage
ENGAGEMENT · SIGNAL 100% · DATA 3/3
The node locks onto your signal and the screen floods red. Diegetic CONTACT and TOPOLOGY windows lay out the enemy and the wire. You don’t have HP — you have Signal Integrity; you don’t have mana — you have Data Packs. Turn order is initiative on the network.
-
06Hold the wire
wait — watching the wire · TURN 2
The ransomware encrypts the floor tile by tile; a cryptominer siphons your cycles and steals a Data Pack. Quarantine it, starve it, spoof it, or pin its PID — every threat has multiple solutions, and the wrong one gets loud.
-
07Clear the node
kill -9 Cryptominer_03 — node secured
Pin the process, terminate it clean, no backlash. Hostile daemons desaturate to grey as your white control-pulse overwrites their colour. NODE CLEARED — and the recovered logs drop something heavier than loot.
-
08Follow the thread
connect 203.18.100.7 — tunnel established
The ransom note is signed by a Corpo Syndicate cell; its C2 beacon points one hop deeper into a Red accord. Connect, and the whole node renders in hostile red — faction is identity, painted into every wall. The investigation never really ends; it escalates.
[THE COLOUR WHEEL]
Factions are identity
The world maps to the real cybersecurity colour wheel. Hue is who someone is — painted into their towns, their daemons, their walls — and it never lies, even from across the dark.
Defense
Blue — Wall Defenders
Fortified, gridded bastions ringed by firewall ramparts. Safe-ish — if your certificate checks out.
Offense
Red — Control Elites
Angular predatory spires and choke points. The flood originates here. Owned, hostile turf.
Operations
Green — Infrastructure
Pipes, conduits, automation arms. They run the backbone; cross them and your bandwidth throttles.
Education
Orange — Knowledge
Signal towers, archives, broadcast dishes. Buy threat intelligence and decrypt lore in their halls.
The commons
Purple — Townsfolk
Markets, mixed dwellings, lantern-lit crowds — and your own starting identity. Where everyone meets.
Reserved hues — not factions
Yellow
Not a faction — the vanished Builders of the old Internet. Seeing yellow means you found something old. Relic, ruin, sacred and rare.
White
Absent governance — and your own control signal. A white pulse sweeping a node is you overwriting whoever owned it.
[THE THREAD]
Something older is hunting too
Clear a node and the loot rarely ends the story — it deepens it. The ransom note you recover is signed by a Corpo Syndicate cell, its beacon pointing one hop deeper into the network. The Syndicate are the remnants of the old-world giants that drowned the first Internet — and they’re back to harvest human data all over again.
You don’t pull that thread alone. Kumo, a cheerful little assistant AI, rides along to handle the busywork — bookmarks, fast-travel, the auto-mapper — so you can keep your eyes on the wire. In a network this hostile, every netrunner learns the same lesson eventually: trust is a certificate, and certificates can be forged.
$ wishlist --platform=steam
Targeting Steam Next Fest, October 2026. Follow the build in the garden.