Once upon a time some developers created a cool arcade game about hunting ghosts, but for one reason or another had to abandon it and accidentally left it running. For decades. Anyway, as the game sat there abandoned and running, the AI characters inside the game became self aware and starting wreaking havoc in the game world. One of the independent AIs in the game world, the Debug Unit, wants to restore order and reaches out to you, the Navigator, to help. The only problem is that the original game is in such disrepair due to the AIs causing havoc that only one of the arcade machine’s buttons work, so you’ll need to use just one input in various ways in order to solve puzzles and resolve the chaos inside this video game world. That is the premise to Playerless, and it’s pretty darn clever if you ask me. Check out the trailer.
Playerless is a game that doesn’t take itself too seriously at all, and pokes a lot of fun at the “game within a game" setup. That said, it’s still a full story-driven adventure with interesting characters, witty dialogue, and increasingly difficult puzzles to solve using your single working button. You’ll visit the remnants of the original game’s levels, but also explore the inner workings of the arcade machine itself with levels filled with gears and mechanics that made the original game work. You’ll also have to deal with (intentional) bugs and glitches due to the broken state of the...