kinda rocks. covers themes of ai sentience and exploitation with devastating conviction and nails its atmosphere with a grungy dark psx aesthetic and sound design that you feel in your core. horror is best when its personal though, and the relationship this game weaves between you the player and demOS is hard to forget. the writing is excellent, and the game creates a deeper level of immersion through a dynamic of punching in prompts into a retrofuturist console to interact with the ai at the centre of the story and then pulling you out of the terminal to solve puzzles and explore the inside of its mind.

things get all kinda of haywire, obvs, and the way this game led me along to its conclusion was pretty special i thought. there's a point where i thought the game had ended pretty ruthlessly and haunting in its own right, but no there was more! and it was even more scary! initially started writing this with the phrase 'mini masterpiece' but idk why this tendency exists (within me, within most gamers) to diminish games because of their shorter lengths - the engima machine is maybe.. just a masterpiece? its great! 10/10, no notes.