Search the rooms
Ten rooms, eighty-one things worth looking at. A dry umbrella in a rack on a night it did not stop raining. A key hook with the number scratched off. A telephone cord stretched to its limit toward a door that was locked.
Halcyon Research Complex · sealed 13 November 1986
Adrenochrome The Halcyon Protocol
Nineteen years ago a sleep-research facility on the coast road shut down between one shift and the next. Six people were inside. The paperwork says everybody went home. The building says otherwise.
You are the assessor sent to catalogue what is left. You have one night, a torch that does not work, and a filing system that somebody has been editing.
- Free — no download, no install
- No account needed to play the opening
- Phone, tablet, desktop — the same game
- Every recording has a written transcript
0
Investigations opened
0
Documents recovered
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Locks opened
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Nights finished
Updating live · now
The situation
A licence for eight hours. A record of fourteen.
Halcyon ran a sleep observation programme under a government research licence. Subjects slept one night under a coloured filter while somebody sat in the next room and wrote down what they did on the hour. The licence permitted eight hours. The 1986 volume averages eleven.
The staff physician objected in writing five times. Four of those objections are not in the record. On the night of 12 November he was rostered to observation himself, by somebody who does not write the roster, for a session the sheet had already been ruled for at fourteen hours.
The word in the title is a colour designation. Gel 114, catalogued as adrenochrome — a lighting filter, a number in a stores ledger, a sleeve in a cold cabinet. It is the least frightening thing in this building and you will understand why by about four in the morning.
This is fiction. Everything above was invented for the game, including the programme, the facility, and the people.
How it plays
Look at things. Write them down. Work out what they mean.
Build the record
Twenty-two documents go on a corkboard. Connect two that agree and you get a deduction; connect two that only look related and you get told so. There is a plain list mode with the same information for anyone who does not want a board of string.
Open what is locked
Seven puzzles, none of them arbitrary. Every code is written down somewhere in the building. A keypad takes a time off a stopped clock; a tape deck takes three numbers off a card taped inside its own lid.
Decide how it ends
Three choices with consequences: what you do with the objection, whether you play a reel that gets one honest pass, and whether you turn the ward light on. Three endings. They are genuinely different.
Playable now
Chapter One: The Nightwatch Ledger
The full first chapter: ten explorable rooms, seven puzzles, an evidence board, four surveillance recordings, six audio logs and three endings. Ninety minutes to two hours. Free to play, no account required, though an account keeps your progress across devices.
- Rooms
- 10
- Documents
- 22
- Recordings
- 5, all transcribed
- Camera clips
- 4, all described in text
- Puzzles
- 7
- Endings
- 3
- Achievements
- 20
- Length
- 90–135 minutes
Built to be playable
Nothing in this game is locked behind a sense you do not have
No clue is audio-only
Every tape ships a complete written transcript, and every clue spoken on a tape is also written on paper somewhere in the building. The whole chapter is solvable with the sound off.
No clue is colour-only
Symbols carry printed code numbers as well as shapes. Wiring is labelled in words. High-contrast mode changes the interface, not the difficulty.
No clue needs a mouse
Every hotspot, every puzzle control and the entire evidence board are reachable from the keyboard, with visible focus and a list view for anything spatial.
Reduced motion is real
Turn it on and the transitions stop, the film grain stops, and the one flashing sequence in the chapter becomes a static frame with the same information.
Text you can read
Font size scales to 160% without anything overlapping, and there is a dyslexia-friendly typeface for every word of the fiction.
No timers you did not ask for
Optional time bonuses can be switched off entirely. Nothing in the story is failed by being slow, and nothing is lost by putting it down.
If you would rather read than play
The whole file is public
Every document, every transcript and every camera description is in the archive, indexed and searchable, whether or not you ever open the game.
Evidence archive
Intake ledgers, observation sheets, duty rosters, an unsent letter, and one objection that was never stamped.
Open the archiveRecordings
Six tapes, complete transcripts. A dictation, a records note, a night watch log, and one session reel.
Read the transcriptsCase files
Background on the facility, the programme, and the six people whose names are on the roster.
Read the case filesThe gate is open. The light in reception is on.
Somebody left it on for you, which is either courtesy or an appointment.
ADRENOCHROME is a work of fiction. The Halcyon Research Complex, the Halcyon Protocol, Vessel Integrated Systems, every character, document, recording, chemical and event in this game are invented for entertainment. Nothing here describes real people, real organisations, or real events.