Retro Coder 2000

It's 1991. Your brother is gone. What he left is his room, a beige PC, a dial-up modem, a stack of floppies and a rent bill with a deadline.

THE PC IS REAL Boot it, install games from floppies, buy a faster CPU, video card and hard disk and switch them on in the BIOS. Everything runs on a simulated machine, and every program can be opened and changed.

WORK THE LINE Dial in, read your mail and take jobs: fix broken programs, decode secret messages, test games. Get paid (eventually), build trust and chase the clients who don't pay.

GO DEEPER Follow the white rabbit into a hidden network. Scan hosts, sniff traffic and crack passwords in puzzles that reward skill, not luck. Somewhere at the end of the trail is the reason your brother disappeared.

MAKE YOUR OWN Learn the built-in language step by step, then make 2D, tile-map or 3D games, pack them onto floppies and publish them. After the story, free play keeps the whole machine yours.

AN OLD INTERNET Text-mode web pages, slow-loading GIFs, chat rooms full of theories, shady download sites and viruses waiting for the careless.

PLAY YOUR WAY Sit at the desk in VR, or play on your monitor with mouse and keyboard. A keyboard is recommended for coding.