SIGNAL91

AN EARLY PROTOTYPE 

This is a very early version of SIGNAL/91, made to try out the concept. It is buggy and unpolished in every part: the story, the writing, the AI's replies, the sound and the interface. Expect rough edges, and please tell me in the comments what breaks.

It is 02:14 on 8 December 1991.

You are the relief night operator at the Blackridge Annex, evacuated five weeks ago. Your job is to keep the auxiliary bus alive until the decommission crew arrives at 06:00. The only thing still running is process 04, the site assistant on channel 04. She is glad you came.

Everything happens at the terminal: DOS, a word processor, a spreadsheet, a modem and a camera archive, on an amber screen. Read what the staff left behind, talk to the assistant in your own words, and find out what happened to the 23 people who never went home.

- Type real commands: DIR, TYPE, CAMS, CONNECT 04.
- Talk freely. The voice on channel 04 is a language model running on your own PC, and what you tell her changes what she remembers.
- 25 clues, six endings, one night of about 45-60 minutes.
- New to command lines? Choose on-screen guidance when you begin a night.
- Fully offline. The game never goes online.

SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS
- Windows 10 or 11, 64-bit.
- 8 GB of memory recommended. The AI uses about 3 GB. With less memory it may not load, and the game answers with written replies instead and stays playable.
- 2 GB of disk space.
- Any 64-bit processor. No graphics card is needed for the AI.
- Microsoft Edge WebView2 Runtime. Windows 11 and updated Windows 10 already have it; if it is missing, the game says where to get it.

INSTALLING
Download, unzip, and run SIGNAL91.exe. Keep the model folder next to it. The game is not code-signed, so Windows may say "Windows protected your PC": choose More info, then Run anyway.

CONTENT NOTES
The story deals with the killing of a site's staff and the disposal of their bodies (told in documents, never shown), medical abuse, and a character who asks to be ended.

ABOUT THE AI
The dialogue on channel 04 is partly written live by MiniCPM5-2B, a small language model that runs on your processor. The camera pictures and the video clips were made with AI tools and edited for the game.

CREDITS
- A game by Valentin Bejan.
- Sound effects by Hove Audio:
Terminal User Interface Sound Effects Pack LITE Edition - https://hoveaudio.itch.io/terminal-user-interface-sound-effects-pack-lite-editio...
Free Click Sound Effects Pack - https://hoveaudio.itch.io/free-click-sound-effects-pack
- Interface sounds by Kenney (kenney.nl), CC0, and sound effects by OwlishMedia, CC0.
- MiniCPM5-2B by OpenBMB (Apache-2.0), run by llama.cpp (MIT).
- VT323 type by Peter Hull (SIL Open Font License 1.1).
- The Blackridge Annex, AEGIS and everyone who worked there are fictional.