Seven Deadly Bytes

Eight small arcade games in one cabinet, each built around a single bad idea that you cannot stop having. Every game rewards the thing that kills you. Eat to score and you steer like a bus. Hoard the coins and the exit moves further away. Draw a crowd and the crowd turns. There is no version of any of these games where the sensible player wins much, and that is the point. ▸ THE CABINET • PRIDE, HIGH SCORE: stack a monument to yourself. Applause pays, gravity does not care. • GREED, MINE!: fill your arms in a collapsing vault. Every coin makes the door further away. • LUST, ALLURE: draw a crowd and keep it sweet. A crowd that gets too keen turns on you. • ENVY, KEEPING UP: match the neighbour purchase for purchase. The bill arrives either way. • GLUTTONY, ONE MORE BITE: eat everything in reach. A full stomach scores double and steers like a bus. • WRATH, RED MIST: smash what provokes you. Rage does not check what it is hitting. • SLOTH, LATER: do as little as possible. Everything you defer is still out there, growing. • And once you have survived all seven, the cabinet unlocks the eighth. VIRTUE, ENOUGH: all seven appetites at once, and the only winning number is enough. ▸ FORTY LEVELS Five per game. They start gently and stop being gentle fairly quickly. Three lives, a best score per game, and no way to buy your way past a level you cannot do. ▸ MADE FOR A THUMB One hand, portrait, tap and swipe. Nothing needs two thumbs, a tutorial or a twenty-minute intro. Pick it up at a bus stop, put it down when the bus arrives. ▸ WHAT IS NOT IN IT No adverts, no in-app purchases, no accounts, no sign-in, no online anything. It does not collect data, because it never speaks to a server. It works with the aeroplane mode on, and it will still work in five years when the servers it never used have been switched off. This is a homage to the pocket-money games of the 1980s: small, sharp, slightly unfair, and finished. Whether it is any good is a matter for you.