Video Game / s.p.l.i.t (2025)

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s.p.l.i.t is a short Psychological Horror video game developed and released by Mike Klublinka (of Buckshot Roulette fame) on 24 July, 2025 for PC.

Set in a dystopian 2082 (as revealed by the camera date in both endings), a hacker named Axel teams up with Sarah and Viktor to gain root access to an "unethical superstructure". As the trio work together to infiltrate the restricted facility, the tension ratchets up as Axel slowly moves forward towards discovery — and the price he'll have to pay to avoid A Fate Worse Than Death.

The game itself is essentially a puzzle in disguise, as players must navigate an old and unintuitive computer system that imitates a Disk Operating System. In order to progress, the player has to correctly interpret the information on the screen and understand what commands need to be input to proceed with Axel's hack.

s.p.l.i.t contains examples of:

• Anti-Frustration Features: Despite the interface being a bit obtuse, it's still designed to be overcome. A side-mounted printer allows players to record information they want to look up later, while the KeskOS subtly leads players to the solution that needs to be reached, if they pay attention. It outright names one of the early solutions by stating that the player needs to edit the "trusted devices list" in H:/tools/HoleMounter/trusted_devices.data" with the "nano" command.
• Better to Die than Be Killed: Axel has already prepared his "way out" in the inevitable event of a backtrace, with a Wham Shot revealing a noose already hanging from the ceiling. It turns his solution isn't sufficient, as Viktor explains that "the machine" only needs intact brains to plug into, forcing Axel to improvise an even worse solution.
• Bittersweet Ending: The worm virus sent to cripple the superstructure's centrifuge fails, while Axel commits suicide. The only reason why the "good" ending isn't a complete Downer Ending is that Axel's impromptu lobotomy allows Viktor and Sarah to escape for now, while the soldiers sent to apprehend him commit suicide to escape being interrogated themselves, showing how badly managed the authoritarian system is.
• Crapsack World: What can be seen of the setting shows that the populace live a grungy existence, perpetually in fear of an unseen "facility" that commands a legion of soldiers, who have the technology to extract the brains of victims and subject them to machine-based interrogation considered so horrifying that suicide is considered the preferable alternative.
• Defector from Decadence: Both Viktor and Sarah are implied to be workers at the facility itself, having either worked on the engine itself or "interrogation presets" at different branches. While both of them believe they're going to hell for their work, they've chosen to attempt to sabotage it from the inside.
• Eye Scream: After Axel's first attempt at an impromptu lobotomy via power drill fails due to it running out of batteries, he's forced to perform a transorbital lobotomy via a screwdriver through his eye. The player has to complete a typing minigame to determine whether he has the willpower to spear the thing through while he's looking straight at it. If he succeeds, players actually get to see the vision warp and blur as Axel stumbles around a few seconds before dying.
• Fascist, but Inefficient: The facility's horrifying reputation is proportional to how badly managed it is behind the scenes. Viktor discovers he can access the security shutters from his location and wonders why it isn't airgapped, to which Sarah says the facility as a whole is "held up by duct tape". In the "good" ending, the two soldiers who discover Axel are so scared of being accused of leaking information and being interrogated that they commit suicide rather than return to base, sabotaging any proper investigation that could have occurred.
• A Fate Worse Than Death: Being plugged into the machine is considered such, as it plugs a human brain into it and "breaks it" for interrogation. Several characters commit suicide in such a way as to destroy their brains to prevent this from happening.
• Guide Dang It!: This is the main puzzle of the game. There is no tutorial and no settling in — it is just you, the OS, and a series of commands you can pull up with the "help" command. You have to type everything in by hand. Where is the directory? How do you copy the config file? How do you generate a key? Well, you're the hacker, figure it out.
• Hacker Cave: Half of Axel's room is filled with a large, multi-shelf setup that has multiple machines, monitors and a "field kit" used to access the facility remotely. It also has camouflage laid over the roof, tipping off some soldiers that it's the site of a serious attack and not an opportunistic "preset junkie".
• Hollywood Hacking: The crux of the game, though it lacks some of the glitz and glamour. In fact, much of the story involves preparing for the infiltration, as Axel turns a remote terminal "field kit" into a Trojan horse to infiltrate the facility. There is plenty of typing, but it's not so much "magically reprogramming" a target as it is faking credentials for access with the help of insiders, who also represent the "social engineering" aspect that's not often brought up.
• Mind Prison: Heavily implied to be what being plugged into the machine entails. Axel is instructed to cripple his brain to avoid interrogation, and in the bad ending, the soldiers extract his head.
• Multiple Endings:
  • In the "good" ending, Axel works up the willpower to stab himself with the screwdriver, making his brain unusable for interrogation. The soldiers, seeing this, panic and go on the run, before deciding to kill themselves as well, depriving the facility of any intel that will expose Sarah or Viktor.
  • In the "bad" ending, Axel doesn't go through with the lobotomy, and hangs himself as originally planned. The soldiers remove his head and note that the machine will "break" him into revealing everything.
• Not What I Signed on For: Axel, already tense from the impending job, isn't too pleased to hear that the field kit he'll be working with is an older model than he requested, and threatens to quit on the spot. It's only Sarah and Viktor's promises that the back-end programming is essentially the same, and predating any security patches that Axel gives up and decides he's already in too deep to back out.
• Not What It Looks Like: Played for drama in the "good" ending. When the soldiers discover Axel's lobotomized body, they realize that someone else told him to cripple his brain, and that, due to the Fascist, but Inefficient structure of their organization, they'll be the ones accused of being the leak, leading to them killing themselves as well rather than be wrongfully subject to the machine as well.
• Nothing Is Scarier: As the hack is remote, the details of the facility are only mentioned in writing. All that's known is that it's a superstructure that commands many soldiers, has prisoners, and a machine so terrifying it casts a shadow over the plot, with whatever it does in breaking victims so terrible that no one wants to go to the facility.
• Retraux: The game has blocky graphics and depicts much older computer technology and software, likely to illustrate how the world has regressed. Axel communicates with his team via an IRC Channel, and the fictional KeskOS uses command prompts and ASCII art ala DOS.
• Sesquipedalian Loquaciousness: Used to illustrate the dystopic nature of the setting where people are dehumanized. The control prompts for controlling Axel and having him move from screen to screen by looking around isn't "look around", but "distance yourself" before you "pivot your cervical spine".
• Sound-Only Death: When the two soldiers decide to commit suicide, the perspective stays inside the truck, instead cutting to a shot off the interior as the truck is raised on a jack, before abrupt dropping down, with the implication that the soldiers' heads were under the front wheels.
• Spell My Name with a "The": None of the technology is given formal terms. All the characters simply refer to them as "the facility", "the machine", "the centrifuge", and so forth.
• The Voice: Sarah and Viktor are only communicated with through the IRC chat, and are never seen in person.