SYSADMIN Hell

Welcome to your new job. You're already behind.

You are the only IT person at Pinnacle Synergy Group. There's a queue. It's already full. Users are panicking, Management is angry, and the printer is hostile. Then the company starts to grow.

Get up from the desk. In 3D.

Sit back from the screen and you're in a dim office: the desk lamp, a mug of cold coffee, sticky notes for today's to-do list, a phone that rings when trouble's coming. Get up and walk the whole floor in first person, past colleagues who'd rather you didn't, to the jobs pinned on the printer, the desks and the server room. Turn it on in Options, any time.

Fix it with your own hands

• Find the port the plug fits on the back of the PC (check nobody saw the first try)

• Drag each sheet out of the printer the way it went in. The wrong way tears it

• Pick the right bit for each screw on the monitor arm

• Set the thermostat to the number on Facilities' sticky note. Not 22. NOT 22.

• Pull the cord, twist out the old tube, keep your eyebrows

Grow it. Buy a company. Regret it.

At 12,000 employees, Management buys Halcyon Data Solutions, and their IT becomes yours: a fax machine that is also the email server, forty shared drives called NEW, and a sysadmin who never left. Integrate them in three days, or the board brings in consultants and sends you the bill.

Mine HellCoin on the company servers

The last sysadmin left a crypto miner running in a cupboard in the server room. From your first morning it's yours:

• Buy rigs, faster GPUs and liquid cooling, and watch the coins pile up

• The price wanders, and jumps or crashes on the headlines

• Sell into the IT budget (Finance calls it "cost savings")

• The rigs cook the servers and make Compliance curious. Take Compliance to lunch. Switch off before Audit Day. Keep a cold wallet

The Board has three slides

Every few days the Board makes you pick a policy that lasts the rest of your career: Hustle culture, Cloud first, AI-first strategy, Run IT as a profit centre... Every one is a trade, and no two careers end up the same.

Get up from your desk

Some problems can't be fixed from a chair. Walk the office: open-plan floors, a server room that hums, a supply cupboard, and a lift that doesn't stop at 4.

• Fix it in person: trace the right cable, pull a paper jam out the way it went in, find the empty toner, change a light tube without losing your eyebrows

• Build PCs at the workbench for new starters, to their spec and Finance's budget

• Run the server room: amber drive lights, loose cables, fans full of dust

Read the ticket. Fix the problem. Don't make it worse.

Every ticket is a small puzzle, and the answer is usually in the text if you read it properly. Pick the right quick fix and it's gone. Pick the wrong one and it grows.

• 170+ hand-written tickets that get stranger as the company grows, plus your own: write tickets for your office, or subscribe to packs on the Steam Workshop

• Rush hours, SLAs, escalations from executives, and a Chaos meter that sets off incidents when the backlog gets away from you

• Hit rock bottom and HR puts you on a Performance Improvement Plan. Meet it, or clear your desk

A whole desktop from 1998

The game is a working late-90s desktop: drag windows, minimise them to the taskbar, live inside HellDesk, HellMail Express, Server Manager and Add/Remove Automation. Automate everything (13 automations, every one fails in its own way), keep it serviced, hire junior admins with real quirks, and watch them burn out.

Or do it all from the command line

The HellDOS Prompt runs the whole job by typing: QUEUE, FIX 12 2, REBOOT MAIL-01, HLC SELL. It also knows a few things it shouldn't. Try PING FLOOR4.

Every day is different

• Patch Tuesday, Audit Day, Board Visit, Heatwave, Full Moon, and seasonal days on their real dates

• Branching major incidents: ransomware, a reply-all storm that becomes self-aware, a printer hostage situation

• A company of the week, the same twist for everyone: a hospital, a law firm, a crypto startup...

Something is wrong with this company

Tickets arrive from nobody. The printer has started writing letters. There's a server nobody installed, warm to the touch. The lift has a button for 4. It has never stopped there. Halcyon's building has a floor 4 too, and their sysadmin knows where the keys are.

Lots to come back for

• Multiple endings, and one that's well hidden; an endless mode with milestones and a leaderboard

• Three difficulties, contract clauses, and backgrounds that change how a career starts

• A career that builds on itself: Seniority for life, a collection of every kind of ticket you've closed, automation that levels up, staff you promote to Principal, rack space you rent out

• The night shift: close the game and your automation keeps working, up to 8 hours

• HellDesk University: permanent perks that carry from career to career

• The Daily Shift: the same day for everyone, on a leaderboard, with streaks and office leagues

• Your Company: put your own workplace, boss and coworkers into the tickets

• 64 achievements, a sarcastic office assistant, procedural hold music, a boss key, and Bugsweeper (on company time)

• Play with mouse and keyboard, or a controller (Steam Deck friendly)

• English, German, French, Spanish, Brazilian Portuguese and Russian

Clock in. You're already behind.