Stardate 1999

▶ Play in your browser · 15 minutes · best with sound · mouse or number keys

Every 1999 superfan dreams of going back. You got the last hour, in a copy shop.

A comedy RPG in the spirit of *Disco Elysium*. You're a 24th-century officer, and a museum exhibit (a fax of a cat) just sent you where it came from: New Year's Eve 1999, 11:00 PM.


Your future gear is dead weight. The only tech that works here is old: a fax machine, a photocopier and the payphone outside. Get to the payphone before midnight. A very polite man in a grey suit would prefer that you leave quietly.

Ten voices in your head weigh in on everything. All of them are confidently wrong.

> TECHNOBABBLE: Primitive matter transmitter. Paper only. Adorable.
>
> FACTUAL OBSERVATION: It sends pictures of paper down a phone line. That is all it does.
>
> TRANSLATOR: The copier keeps saying "PC LOAD LETTER." Translation: unknown. Possibly a threat.

Some replies roll the dice, and failing a roll is often funnier than passing. Lean on one voice too hard and it burns out for good, sometimes mid-sentence.

How to play

Click a reply, or click anything in the room. Click anywhere to read on. Every reply costs a minute of your hour, and your progress saves in the browser.

Keys: 1–9 and 0 choose · Space reads on · T transcript · N notes

Five endings. One payphone.

Every fact you dig up goes into your notes for a B-minus thesis on the Last Good Year, and the gaps are your hints. You only get the endings you've earned, and the last screen shows what you missed.

*Tell me which ending you got, and which voice you burned out.*

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*Silas Reinagel for Ludum Dare 60. Hold music: "Night in Venice", Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com), CC BY 4.0. Full sound credits are in the game, on the title screen. Anonymous play stats; opt out on the title screen.*