About This Game

Welcome to your new job. You're already behind.

You are the only IT person at Pinnacle Synergy Group. There's a queue. It's already full. Users are panicking, Management is angry, and the printer is hostile.

Read the ticket. Fix the problem. Don't make it worse.

Every ticket is a little puzzle: the answer is usually in the text, if you read carefully. Pick the right quick fix and it's gone. Pick the wrong one and it grows. Not sure? "Work on it" gets there too, slowly. Reading is faster.

• 160+ hand-written tickets that get stranger as the company grows

• Follow-ups, when users write back with a brand new problem

• SLAs, priorities and a Chaos meter that triggers incidents when the backlog gets out of hand

A whole desktop from 1998

The entire game is a working late-90s desktop. Drag windows, minimise them to the taskbar, open programs from the Start menu, and live inside the HellDesk ticket queue, HellMail Express, Server Manager and Add/Remove Automation.

Automate everything. Watch it break.

• 13 automations, from the Auto-Responder to the Script Cluster, and every one fails in its own way: reply loops, a blue-screened coffee machine, an intern who unplugs servers, a chatbot handing out confident advice

• Hire junior admins with real quirks (Night Owl, Cowboy, Printer Whisperer...). Give pep talks, order pizza, and watch them burn out

• Keep servers alive as load grows, or drown in "IS IT DOWN??" tickets

Or do it all from the command line

The HellDOS Prompt runs the whole job by typing: QUEUE, FIX 12 2, REBOOT MAIL-01, BUY COFFEE. It also knows a few things it shouldn't. Try PING FLOOR4.

Every day is different

• 10 kinds of day: Patch Tuesday, Audit Day, Board Visit, Heatwave, Full Moon...

• Branching major incidents: ransomware, a reply-all storm that becomes self-aware, a printer hostage situation

• Worm outbreaks to contain, objectives from Management, and emails that want an answer

Something is wrong with this company

Tickets arrive from nobody. The new hires don't blink. There's a server nobody installed, and an email from the previous sysadmin warns you not to reboot it. The building has three floors. Please do not go to Floor 4.

• Multiple endings, and one that's well hidden

• Three difficulties, plus contract clauses that trade pain for Experience

• HellDesk University: permanent perks that carry from career to career

• The Daily Shift: the same day for everyone, on a leaderboard

• 50 achievements, a sarcastic office assistant, five tracks of procedural hold music, and Bugsweeper (on company time)

  Get up from your desk

  
  Some problems can't be fixed from a chair. Press F5 and walk the office: open-plan floors, the IT room, a server room that hums, a supply cupboard, a kitchen with a fridge nobody owns, and a lift that doesn't stop at 4. The queue keeps growing while you're away.
  
  
  • Fix it in person: trace the right cable, pull a paper jam out the way it went in, find the empty toner, pick the right screwdriver bit, change a light tube without losing your eyebrows
    
    
  • Build PCs at the workbench for new starters, to their spec and Finance's budget. Watch the power supply. The CEO's nephew wants his to cost more than yours
    
    
  • Run the server room: amber drive lights, loose cables, fans full of dust. Patching from your desk won't touch them
    
    
  • Keep the supply cupboard stocked, or have nothing to fix things with. Order for tomorrow, or pay double for now

Bring your own office

• Your Company: type in your company, your boss and your coworkers, and they start filing the tickets

• Office leagues: share a code with your team and race each other on today's Daily Shift

• Copy result: paste your score straight into the team chat

• Boss key: press F9 and the game becomes a Q3 budget spreadsheet

Play in English, German, French, Spanish, Brazilian Portuguese or Russian.

Welcome aboard.