oneway.exe: Module 1.0

Look, I don't usually play these types of games but the ending gives me goosebumps every time. The sound design is great, the artwork is fantastic. I can tell an obscene level of love and care went into this game. A sincere hats off to the devs. I hope this gets more attention!!

I'd been searching for another fake-desktop game for a while, since I adore that concept and love puzzles, and Oneway just appeared to me randomly one day. Instantly I was sucked into the world and the characters. The story is dark, intriguing, and heartbreaking all at once. It requires you to really think and dig through EVERYTHING for small clues that will lead to any of the endings. Oneway really dives hard into 2010's internet nostalgia. Forums, chat logs, teen websites, you name it. Each character in the fictional "UNTITLED" game is a love-letter to different internet horror over the last two decades. Podcasts, creepypasta, chainmail, etc. The art is gorgeous, the voice acting is well done, and the scares it does give you are executed amazingly. It's a story of love, of hate, of obsession. It's a psychological thriller that puts you in a very unique pair of shoes and doesn't let you know where things are headed. On top of that, the community has been the kindest and warmest I've seen yet. Everybody from simple fans, to mods, and even the devs themselves are there to help and welcome you in. This game is underrated and absolutely worth giving it a go!

TLDR; If you like character-driven stories with meaningful psychological and emotional impact like Homestuck; ARG games like Shipwrecked 64; the feeling that every time you stop in your tracks and pay attention to the environment, a conversation, a background image, a voice, etc, you discover something new about the whole puzzle like in Blue Prince; if you're an artist and love to draw and do plenty of fanart of your favorite characters; if you like theory crafting, there are hundreds and hundreds of theories and conclusions you can make; if any of those things check, then this is the right place for you. All you need to do is give it a chance. It will slowly make its way into your heart, like a parasite. This game is a hidden gem that definitely needs to be known by more people. oneway.exe is a callback to the early days of the internet, when things were simpler, you had a small group of friends who you felt really understood each other and it was you and them against the world, specifically if you liked some niche things and felt nobody else could GET IT like you do, except those friends. This is a videogame and can be enjoyed as such, but it's also an ARG and encourages you to interact with the real life part of it. Doing so is not necessarily mandatory but it's a very rewarding experience and makes you learn more about this whole world building. Before jumping right in, be aware that the game relies on reading conversations, so reading and paying attention is an important part of it. If you absolutely hate reading, then it's probably not for you. But if you're someone who doesn't entirely hate it, then I encourage you to give it a try. It's not like it has huge walls of text, and it's not a visual novel either, so it shouldn't be that off-putting. With that being said, the game has a huge emphasis on character-driven narrative. We get to know some characters, and from then we try to understand what's going on with the game. What's it that we're being shown? Who are we? What happened to these people? Who are they really? Are they really just a group of friends? Is there anything they're hiding from each other? What are their relationships? What's happening on their minds? These are all questions that you will end up asking yourself sooner or later. And believe it or not, that's part of the charm. The characters are very well written, they have actual depth in their personalities, typing quirks, color codes, etc. If you're a fan of Homestuck you'll feel right at home, since it pretty much emulates that sense of getting to know online friends with a deep psychological development. Some of the things that really stand out are the beautiful art style, the music, the presentation, and the old school internet aesthetic. The way the characters interact and their opinions on different 2000s internet types of horror tropes and mysteries are nostalgic and they do offer some kind of interesting points of view about how they were consumed and how they themselves saw them. The entire game is presented in seven different sections, each one divided into two different parts. A thematic "Escape Room", each with its own different presentation and gameplay mechanics, with a charismatic in-universe horror character, each taken from a different kind of horror theme, be it old cursed chain email, amusement park animatronics, found footage, collaborative internet horror mythos (think about SCP and Backrooms entities), and more. After finishing said Escape Room you're met with a computer desktop section where you solve puzzles involving reading files, digging in folders and learning about the main characters who made this cursed videogame. Then there's the ARG. This involves navigating different websites restored by The Restoration Team. They serve as a group of outsiders from the game's perspective who knew or learned about the main characters and are trying to restore the websites they worked on together. They seem to be working only w…