Containment55.bin

If you're reading this, it means that I failed. This drive contains all the research on it I was able to save. I started a containment program, but I couldn't complete in time. >..5ac9c400b100d.. lines are missing. Please, you have to finish it. Lock the creature away again before it's too late.

Containment55.bin is an interactive horror game made for Ludum Dare 55. You, dear player, have stumbled across an old hard drive, and your task is to piece together the code required to contain an ancient and mysterious alien creature.

This game should be considered mature.

Content note: one image is derived from a Renaissance-era sketch of nude, humanoid monsters.

I recommend using Chrome to play this game, to get the full experience. The background audio seems to work there, but not in the other browsers I’ve tested.

Stuck? Click here for a hint.

>There are 7 pieces of code hidden throughout the game. Anything ending in ".exe" is code, even if the game text does not explicitly say you found some.

>If you're unable to access a directory or file, try exploring other areas of the hard drive. These files/directories will unlock as you progress.

There was so, so much more I wanted to add to this game, but didn't have time.  There will likely be an updated version posted later as a Ludum Dare Extra submission. Hopefully this version doesn't have any critical errors, because I'm too tired to fix anything more complicated than drink right now.

edit 2024-04-17: yeah, so, about those critical errors, found one that would prevent someone from winning the game, whoops. Used the wrong filename, so fixed that, along with a bug that allowed the user to view an access folder. In theory you could still open it, but it's not visible, so at least it's not confusing. Sorry, folks!

edit 2024-4-20: so, about that access folder bug, uh, I guess my fix from a few days ago did not, in fact, fix the bug I was thing to fix, and instead it broke something else, which wasn’t evident in the Gamemaker test build. Many thanks to the people who left comments alerting me to the problem, and sorry to anyone who played the game earlier this week and weren’t able to finish!