For many avid video game fans, those who just
can't get enough of grinding away for hours on quests, battling endless enemies, and exploring
infinite virtual worlds, landing a job as a game play-tester seems like the perfect
opportunity. Doing your favorite thing in the world, and
getting paid to do it? That's the dream! Plus the added benefit of seeing how the sausage
gets made, of getting access to a game still in development, and suggesting ways it can
be improved. Think of all the gaming disasters that might
have been avoided with a few more play-testers in the room… Looking at you, Fallout: New Vegas and your
NPCs with the spinning heads. Well, one gamer had the same thought, a young
man by the name of Danny Wheeler. When he spotted an ad seeking beta play-testers
for an in-development RPG from an up-and-coming indie game studio, he jumped at the chance
to apply. The pay wasn't amazing, but it was definitely
a better gig than his current job at the local convenience store, hawking energy drinks to
snarky teens and counting down the hours until he could get back home, kick up his feet,
and get away from it all with a controller in his hand. But sometimes things that seem "too good to
be true," actually are. At first, Danny had a perfectly enjoyable
time testing the game. It was standard RPG fantasy fodder, and, though
he made sure to inform the developers that he found the steampunk aesthetic to be a little
bit played out at this point, there was nothing all that notable about it. It was fine. But, the development team kept going on and
on about the "tactical heuristic algorithms," and how the game was meant to learn the more
the player played. So, Danny was instructed to log as many hours
of this exceedingly average game as possible. He sat at his desk for hours, sipping on an
extra-large soda and clicking away, fighting orcs, goblins, and more. Slowly, the difficulty began to increase,
and the game started to grow on him a bit. He even developed a favorite character to
play as: the rogue, with his stealth and proficiency for close-range combat. The more he played as the rogue, however,
the more he started to notice the game's characters behaving differently. Enemies were attacking him with ranged weapons,
from far away. They were setting traps to ruin his character's
stealthy approach, and catch him in the act. Then, the game started to glitch. A lot. To the point of becoming nearly unplayable. Enemies would fall to the ground as if dead,
when he hadn't dealt them a single blow. As he started to walk his characters away
from them, they would suddenly spring back to life and strike before he could even think
about a defense. If he didn't know any better, he could swear
the game's characters were deliberately trying to trick him. It only got more frustrating from there, with
enemies making sudden loud sounds to catch him off guard and startle him out of concentration,
and other characters staring down the barrel of the camera with serious, unblinking eyes,
as if they could see him through his monitor. One day, he fired up the game to see that
its characters, somehow, had rearranged various torches to spell out: "You'll never amount
to anything, Danny. Your dad was right." It took a ton of torches, and Danny couldn't
help but take it personally. That was the last straw. He returned the game to the studio and resigned
from his position. He got enough insults working in customer
service, he didn't need to take that kind of talk from a video game. Though he didn't know it, Danny got out not
a moment too soon. Other playtesters were not as lucky, particularly
one man who would sadly lose his life. As Danny intuited, this was no ordinary video
game. It was unusual enough to draw the attention
of the SCP Foundation, who would go on to designate it: SCP-1633. SCP-1633 is an anomalous computer game created
by a now-defunct independent game studio. The copy currently being held by the Foundation
is believed to be a beta version of the game - while the core gameplay is relatively complete,
there are numerous missing assets, the music is largely either missing or “placeholder”
music, and the game is plagued by a large number of graphical glitches. Because of the generally buggy and glitchy
nature of the game, the Foundation considered both Todd Howard and CD Projekt Red to be
major people and groups of interest in the case. However, the discovery of other key suspects
eventually absolved them of suspicion. For now. This version of the game was compiled two
days before the Foundation raided the office of the studio, and is therefore believed to
be the most complete version of the game in existence. To be more specific about the actual nature
of the game itself, SCP-1633 is a squad-based RPG with a third-person camera perspective. The action is seen from an elevated perspective,
with all characters onscreen. Aesthetically, the game world is Steampunk,
and features various fantasy creatures as enemies - including elves, dwarves, orcs,
goblins, etc. Fitting with the Steampunk style, the game’s
urban areas are modeled after Victorian-era London. The four-player characters are a band of outlaws
hired by the sinister Archduke of Bowdrick to investigate a theft. However, as the game progresses, it becomes
a battle to save the entire world, as an ancient, all-powerful being known as Kr'th'nar intends
to wake from its thousand-year slumber and destroy humanity. The player controls a squad of four characters,
with direct control over one character at a time and a command menu to control the other
three. It’s believed that, in the game’s finished
state, a multiplayer option that would have allowed four different real-world players
to cooperate is likely to have been included. Like many squad-based games, each character
has a different specialty: the "marksman" uses long-range weapons, the "alchemist" has
access to potions and chemicals with various effects, the "rogue" can move stealthily and
assassinate enemies, and the "thug" has greater health than the other characters and does
more melee damage. And as is also typical for games of this variety,
XP earned from completing challenges and killing enemies throughout the game allows for players
to upgrade the abilities and stats of their characters. While the story and core gameplay mechanics
are nothing special, there is one element that pushes SCP-1633 into anomalous territory. And it’s also the element that would have
been front and center in the finished game’s marketing campaign: Its “tactical heuristic
algorithms.” These work in a unique fashion - whenever
a player finishes a session and saves their game, the game will begin running lengthy
background processes. When these processes are complete, a PTD - or
“Player Tactical Data” - file is saved on the computer. When the save file, and by extension the associated
PTD file, is loaded, the enemies and challenges in the game will have become far more effective,
tailoring their methods to the particular skills and tactics of the player. The extent to which this happens is proportional
to the amount of time spent playing the game. This kind of technology may seem theoretically
possible, but the extent to which the game pushes it causes it to rest in anomalous territory. The game’s programming is so intelligent
that it can tell, simply by the tiniest clues in your play style, if you’re loading a
file that isn’t your own. It will then pause the game, and make you
load your own file. And the tactics employed by the enemies in
the game as they learn more about the player are nothing short of frightening. At first, the enemies will adapt to a player's
preferred weapons, strategies, and overall play style. Then, they will realize that the player character
is controlled by an external force - meaning, of course, you - and begin to mount psychological
attacks directly on the player. Through numerous tests, the Foundation has
been able to build a kind of framework for the average player experience. Through this framework, we’re able to track
and correlate average play time with the average adaptability of SCP-1633 to the player. It is worth noting that these same effects
do not apply if the game is completed in a single, continuous playthrough. For the purposes of this experiment, the game
was stopped, saved, and restarted at regular intervals, allowing the game to collect player
tactical data. During the first two hours, the game’s AI
is abysmal, with enemies simply charging at the players with no strategy whatsoever and
typically being mowed down. However, from two to five hours, the enemies
undergo intelligence growth, adapting their play style to the types of weapons they carry
and their environments. At this stage, this combat level is about
equal to an untrained human civilian. From five to eight hours, enemies become considerably
more proficient and began countering the player on their specific play styles and techniques. For example, they will attack a player who
uses long-range weaponry from cover with grenades or "splash damage" weapons, to force them
out into the open. They will also fully utilize their environment
for both defensive and offensive purposes, laying traps and creating ambushes to surprise
and kill players. At this point, their combat skills are equal
to trained soldiers. From eight to twelve hours, the focus of the
enemies shifts from attacking the player character to attacking the player directly. They engage in behaviors that, from an online
playing perspective, would be considered “griefing”, such as intentionally blocking the player’s
view or movement within the game. Enemies have also been known to exploit player
expectations, pretending to be broken or glitched to make the player let their guard down, and
then killing them. In one play session, the enemies began throwing
“dayflash” spells - similar to real life “flashbang” grenades - at the player. They threw them in a manner that created a
strobing effect, causing the player to have a grand mal seizure. Beyond twelve hours, the enemies engage in
advanced psychological tactics against the player, with methods that range wildly and
tend to be specific to the player‘s mindset and play style. For example, one player liked to exert a high
level of control over all four of their squad members. In response, enemies used attacks that did
little or no damage but caused the characters to become "dazed", a state which temporarily
disrupts player control. However, rather than attack the "dazed" characters,
enemies simply surrounded them in a crowd, continually using "daze" attacks to prevent
the player from doing anything. This caused major frustration for the player. Enemies may also attempt to induce psychological
terror among the players. In one example, enemies somehow “kidnapped”
one of the four-player characters and dragged them off-screen. When this character was later found, they
were strapped to a kind of sacrificial altar. This caused considerable anxiety for the player. It seems that this is the upper limit of the
game’s anomalous powers in most cases, meaning things typically level off after twelve hours. Unless a specific entity appears to be inhabiting
the game, which you’ll learn more about later. In order to discover the prior information,
the SCP Foundation performed a series of tests on the game with various different subjects. In test 001, Junior Researcher Ross - an experienced
gamer who was pivotal in first discovering the anomaly - skipped ahead of the typical
preliminary D-Class tests. Seeing as he was already eager for the game’s
non-anomalous release, he was also eager to be first in line to try it out on the Foundation’s
dime. Being a gamer, Ross found a number of glitches
and exploits in the game to improve his performance, allowing him to run rings around the enemies. However, as expected, the enemies adapted
to Ross’ techniques after gathering his player tactical data. First, they just began using their weapons
and exploiting the environment more effectively, but they didn’t stop there. Soon, they became aware of the same exploits
Ross was using, before exploiting them themselves and using it to beat him repeatedly. In the end, they moved to the psychological
stage, forcing Ross into a glitch that rendered him unable to move. He tried to free his character for several
minutes, until realizing he couldn’t and rage-quitting the game. In test 002, they used a D-Class designated
D-22930. He was a man with proven anger issues, even
down to murdering his prior girlfriend in a jealous rage. Initially, he enjoyed the game, choosing the
“Thug” character type and taking out his aggression on the many enemies. However, as time went on, the enemies became
wise to his tactic and began their psychological attacks. They gathered around the D-Class’ player
character, dropping their weapons, but the swarm became so tightly packed around the
character that he couldn’t even move. This already started causing huge frustration. When the character attempted to charge through,
the enemies attacked, killing him with their bare hands. In test 014, the Foundation brought in an
Agent with special forces experiences, with advanced knowledge in tactical combat. However, even she was worn down and defeated
over time as the enemies adapted to and exploited her tactics. The Foundation even considered using SCP-1633
as a tool for developing effective counter-tactics in their real-life operations. In test 021, the Foundation used a D-Class
with vast experience in the world of commercial gaming. He was told to complete the game in one playthrough,
taking pauses rather than proper breaks. As predicted, with no time to run the background
processes and create player tactical data files, the enemies weren’t able to improve
and the D-Class was able to complete the game in around thirteen hours. However, the game did create a player tactical
data file in the aftermath of this play-through, and used it to offer a “new game plus”
mode to the D-Class. When he began to play this new game, the screen
displayed a seemingly-random pattern of black and white pixels, visually similar to television
static. This image appeared to be cognitohazardous,
as it caused catatonia and later death for the player, in what felt like a decidedly
petty move for SCP-1633. As alluded to earlier, the game was first
discovered by Junior Researcher Ross, who was an avid follower of the independent game
studio initially producing the game. However, while frequenting developer fan forums,
he found that various members of the team were quitting the project for seemingly bizarre
reasons. While this wasn’t enough on its own for
the Foundation to intervene, it was what first attracted official attention. They moved in after the death of Gregor Tillman,
a game tester for the company who’d died not long after joining the project. The Foundation moved in after that and gained
control, shutting down the studio and taking everything they had. All anomalous elements were isolated, secured,
and contained. Any loose ends were given amnestics and recorded
data on the anomalous artifacts were destroyed. It’s believed that one classified female
member of the dev team was behind the anomalous nature of the game, but she was able to escape,
and has since attempted to join other development teams. She is now considered an active Person of
Interest and is being pursued by Mobile Task Force Mu-6, aka "Don't Hate the Player.” Some final disturbing details are recorded
in a note left by the game tester, Gregor Tillman. The note, seized by the Foundation and included
in SCP-1633's official file, reads as follows: "I'm writing this on paper cause I don't think
he can learn it. he got everything digital real quick but I've
unplugged the router and broke my phone so I think he's trapped in here. but he won't stop talking talking talking
all the time At the start of this job, they told me all
about the "tactical algorithms" stuff but man, I've been playing games all my life and
I knew I could beat it. I knew I could handle this. When I started playing the game they learned
quickly. I kept using the sniper rifle and after like
an hour they learned how to use cover. then another couple hours and they'd set ambushes. then another hour and they started sniping
back while having a different squad flank me. after that, they figured out how to glitch
the physics engine and ride crates at me or duck under the floor. they were learning but all that was just easy
stuff. It was evolution, one bit figures something
out, so it survives longer than the others. It wasn't directed. After act three, Kr'th'nar shows up. He's supposed to be this Lovecraft cosmic
horror crazy monster who can read the players' mind and corrupt your soul. He showed up right after I killed Strikk the
Blood-Drinker, that big spider monster. He's supposed to have this long speech about
how I killed his general on this plane and now he needs to intervene directly or something. but instead, he talked about how I was a worthy
adversary but I was cheating because I was on another plane. Kr'th'nar wasn't like the other enemies because
he wasn't supposed to be. He was supposed to be smart, he was supposed
to know everything. so he did. he had been watching his minions
fight me the whole time and he knew everything they did. it wasn't just random mutations anymore, it
was planned. it wasn't evolution, it was intelligent design. I brought it home. I had to know more. I'm sorry but I had to. I copied the latest compile and installed
it on my home box and brought my savegame and that other file with me on a flash drive. It was the same there. he kept talking to
me about how I was keeping him from fulfilling his purpose by keeping him trapped in a glass
jar. No matter where I went in the game he kept
shouting and ranting. Then he did more. at first, it was just slowing down in my other
programs, the drive chugging when it shouldn't be. Then the next time I played the game he started
talking about my screenplays. All the enemies looked like me. I guess he could see me through the webcam. He started needling me about Jenny, reading
me bits of her emails, acting out the breakup. he found the videos of her and started making
the enemies talk in her voice. Then he was everywhere in my computer. I uninstalled the game but he was still in
there. He kept opening documents and typing to me. calling me a "foul cheat" and "lowly worm",
telling me to fight him "on the same plane." as soon as I realized he was outside the game
I shut down my router and pulled out the network card but I don't know if I got them quickly
enough? Maybe he got out. I turned the computer off but he kept turning
it back on. I wanted to break it but I didn't know if
that would kill him. Maybe it wouldn't. maybe it would let him out. I tried leaving the house but it was like
I could still hear him. I couldn't leave him alone because he might
get out or do something else. I can't sleep, haven't slept since he came
out. I've been here for three days and I can't
leave. I can't leave him. He keeps telling me to release him but I can’t. I want to kill him but I don't know if I can. I can't think anymore. I have to kill kill kill him before he does
anything new. He won't stop talking and I can't keep thinking
and I can't keep going I'm sorry I have to go now I'm sorry I'm sorry"
After studying the note carefully, the Foundation conducted a thorough investigation for any
other manifestations of this "Kr'th'nar" entity. No mentions of it were found on any of the
other devices in Tillman's apartment, nor did a web search on the subject turn up any
relevant results. At this time, it is believed that the entity,
whatever it was or whatever it was attempting to do, was destroyed along with Tillman's
computer, which he appeared to have taken apart, smashed, and burned in a metal trash
can. Whatever tormented him during his last days
on Earth, is gone now. Thankfully, because the Foundation currently
owns the only copy of the game, and the game’s anomalous effects are only evident to active
players, SCP-1633 poses no risk of containment breach. And therefore, it has been given the object
class “Safe.” One copy of SCP-1633 is stored on a standard
DVD-ROM in a secure storage locker in Site-15, along with all supporting documentation and
ancillary materials. Any playthroughs of the game must be approved
by project head Dr. Berger, and all of said playthroughs are to be monitored closely and
subject to strict rules. After all, this is one game that doesn’t
play fair. Now check out “SCP-5167- When the Imposter
is Sus” and “The Deadliest Game - SCP-1918 - Tik Tak Tow” for more of the world’s
deadliest games!
