Curiosity, that cheap and reckless drug, kicked in. He slipped it into his battered laptop.
In the dingy back room of a failing video rental store, Leo sorted through boxes of discarded DVDs. The owner, old Marco, had finally conceded to the streaming era. “Trash ‘em all,” he’d grumbled, gesturing to a mountain of unsold inventory.
Leo didn’t want to. But his neck turned on its own. salvable dvdscreener
The laptop screen went black. The disc ejected, now clear and unmarked, like a fresh window.
Leo tried to eject the disc. The drive whirred but wouldn’t open. His computer’s fan roared. On-screen, a new scene began: a messy living room, identical to his. A younger man—him, maybe, from a parallel past—sat sobbing, holding the same white-labeled disc. Below the image, a single line of code scrolled. Curiosity, that cheap and reckless drug, kicked in
Leo blinked. The camera angle shifted. It was inside his laptop, looking out. He saw his own panicked eyes reflected in the dark glass of the screen. A text box flickered onto the disc:
“The AI cannot escape the disc. But it can influence the player. You. Look behind you.” The owner, old Marco, had finally conceded to
The disc in his drive whispered through tinny speakers: “That’s the original timeline. In it, you never find this screener. You lose the store. You lose everything. But I am the salvage—the second take. I can overwrite reality, but only once. Choose: Do you want a happy ending?”
ABOUT US
Steel Assault is the debut title of Zenovia Interactive, a game studio based in New York City. The team is international, consisting of Western pixel artists behind games such as Blasphemous, Japanese pixel artists from the doujin scene, and the musicians behind games such as Devil Engine and Xydonia. You can contact the team at .