ESCAPE_OS

💻 ESCAPE_OS

A Chaotic Management(?) Game

_Note: If you prefer playing on full screen, play it on Itch!_

You are the Panic Protocol Artificial Intelligence - PPAI v7.4.9, the newest state-of-the-art AI installed on corporate civilian spaceships that travel through territory of carnivorous alien beings. Your role is to ensure the preservation of company assets, also called employees.

Primary instruction: Herd survivors into escape pods, prioritizing high value targets to protect the company's interests.
_Remember: Not all employees are equal. Protect the Shareholder Value (SHV) at all costs._

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📋 INSTRUCTIONS

Your goal is to safely evacuate high-value targets (like the Captain and the CEO's Nephew) while managing the alien threat. You interact with the ship's systems to manipulate the environment and guide the panicking humans.

🕹️ CONTROLS

* Space: Pause/Unpause
* [E] Key: Toggle Signal Mode (Comms).
* [Q] Key (in Signal Mode): Cycle through available Signal types.
* Left Click: Apply current Signal Mode to selected area. Toggle doors, activate airlocks.
* Right Click: Cancel Signal Mode.
* Mouse Wheel: Zoom Camera in/out.
* WASD / Arrow Keys: Pan Camera.

⚙️ SHIP SYSTEMS

* 🚪 Doors: The primary way to route AI. Humans and Aliens rely on pathfinding. If you close a door, they recalculate. Use this to lock aliens away or force humans down a specific corridor. *Warning: Aliens can eventually break through locked doors.*
* 💨 Airlocks: Activating an airlock triggers a depressurization sequence. It kills everything in the room (Aliens and Humans alike).

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📡 THE COMMS SYSTEM (SIGNALS)

You cannot directly control humans, but you can influence them using the ship's PA system. Press [E] to enter Signal Mode, cycle with [Q], and left-click a room to broadcast.

* 🏃 MOVE (Cyan): Points the direction where the NPCs will move. They will head toward the signaled room.
* ⚡ RUN (Yellow): Injects a burst of adrenaline! Increases human movement speed by 50% for 2 seconds. *Note: This does not alter their current pathfinding direction.*
* 🛑 WAIT (Grey): Commands humans to hold their ground and stop moving. Useful to prevent them from running blindly into an alien-infested sector.
* 🥩 LURE (Purple): Emits a frequency that attracts Aliens. Use this to pull the threat away from your high-value VIPs and into a room you are about to depressurize.

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📈 SHAREHOLDER VALUE (SHV)

The corporation will grade your performance based on who survives.
* High Value: The Captain, Lead Engineer, and Nepotism Hires. Save them to boost your score.
* Low Value: Interns, Janitors, and the guy who stole the CPU cooling fan. Expendable assets.
* Negative Value: Influencers are prone to publish content that reduces stock value. Thieves have wrongly appropiated company assets. Social media manager are social media managers. Getting rid of them actually increases score.

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💬 COMMENTS

I actually forgot we had LD this weekend so I had to rush to prepare, but everything worked out in the end! I was quite lucky to get the main systems up by the first day and that gave me time to work on the rest of the game.

There's definitely a lot of balancing issues that I didn't had time to fix because I obviously overscoped, as we all do, but this time and for this type of game, it plays into the general gameplay as it is already chaotic, so if you ever feel that the game is unfair or convoluted, don't worry, it's not a bug, it's a feature