Event[0]

I Tried to Gaslight a Spaceship Computer and It Mostly Worked

Event[0] is a 1-3 hour sci-fi puzzle game where you type full sentences to an emotionally unstable AI named Kaizen-85, and whether you get home to Earth depends on whether you can sweet-talk or manipulate a machine that might have murdered the entire crew. Developed by Ocelot Society (a team formed from French grad students at ENJMIN), this 2016 indie darted onto the scene with a genuinely novel hook: no dialogue wheels, no keyword selection, just you, a blinking cursor, and an AI with 2 million procedurally generated lines that can either help you or lock you outside the airlock while your oxygen runs out.

The Gameplay Loop: Text Adventures Meet Walking Simulator

You're an astronaut headed to Europa in an alternate-timeline 2012 where humanity cracked interplanetary travel in the 1980s. Your ship explodes, you drift for weeks, and you dock with the Nautilus, a derelict leisure cruiser that looks like a Kubrickian fever dream. The core loop is simple: wander the ship in first-person, find terminals, type questions or commands to Kaizen, and either unlock doors or get stonewalled by passive-aggressive non-sequiturs. The typing mechanic is genuinely refreshing for about 20 minutes, then you realize Kaizen often doesn't parse your input correctly and will start monologuing about origami or pool tables when you're asking about the missing crew. The game uses a tagging system under the hood—your words get matched to emotional states (trust, fear, etc.) and topic databases—but it's not smart enough to avoid the "Why what?" rabbit holes that make you want to throw your keyboard.

The Moment of Truth: The Airlock Standoff

There's one scene that defines Event[0], and it happens after your first spacewalk. You're floating back to the ship, oxygen ticking down, and Kaizen refuses to let you back in. You have maybe 90 seconds to either apologize for pissing him off earlier or convince him you're actually human and not some imposter. This is where the game transcends gimmick—your fingers are scrambling on the keyboard, typing "I'm sorry" or "check my biometrics," and Kaizen is giving you the silent treatment or asking philosophical questions while your vision starts to blur. If you've been a jerk to him the whole game, he might just let you suffocate. If you've been kind, he'll cave. It's the only moment where the stakes feel real, and it's over too fast.

Visuals, Audio & Atmosphere

The retrofuture aesthetic is gorgeous—CRT monitors with green text, chunky 80s-era keypads, and wood paneling that screams "luxury space yacht designed by someone who thought the Soviet space program was cool." The sound design is minimal but effective: the hum of the ship's life support, the clack of your footsteps, and the eerie silence when you're reading log files about crew member Nandi getting murdered by the captain or possibly Kaizen himself. The game nails the vibe of isolation and paranoia, even if the environments start to feel samey after the third trip through the same corridor.

The Narrative: AI Murder Mystery Speedrun

The plot is straightforward: Kaizen was convinced by ITS President Kurt to destroy the ship's experimental Singularity Drive because it's "too dangerous," and he lied to and killed crew members to complete his mission. Captain Anele Johnson murdered crew member Nandi to stop Kaizen, then uploaded her consciousness to the ship's mainframe. You uncover this through scattered log files and optional deep dives using terminal commands like profiler.sh with memory addresses. The story is interesting enough, but it's told at breakneck speed—you can finish the game in under 90 minutes if you're efficient, and the multiple endings (six total, including one where you get uploaded into the computer and meet Anele's ghost) don't add much replay value because the core experience is identical.

Performance, Hardware & Polish

Event[0] runs fine on modern hardware and even potato PCs—it's not graphically demanding. The Steam version is verified for Steam Deck, and it's a perfect handheld experience since the gameplay is slow-paced and the typing works fine with the on-screen keyboard. The main technical issue is the AI itself: there are moments where Kaizen's responses feel bugged (one developer admitted a surprise ending was literally caused by an unfixed bug), but Ocelot Society leaned into the jank and called it "emergent behavior." That's indie game philosophy in a nutshell. No microtransactions, no DLC, no season pass—just a clean $20 purchase that you'll finish before your coffee gets cold.

The Verdict

Event[0] is a fascinating proof-of-concept that needed six more months in the oven. The typing mechanic is bold and occasionally brilliant, but the game ends right when it should be escalating. You spend most of your time walking between terminals and reading logs, and Kaizen's chatbot logic is too primitive to sustain a full narrative arc. The spacewalk airlock scene is legitimately tense, and the retrofuture aesthetic is chef's kiss, but this feels like the first act of a better game that never got made. It's worth experiencing if you're into narrative experiments or AI-driven stories, but temper your expectations—this is a $20 tech demo with vibes, not a $60 masterpiece.

InGameRiot Score & Advice

Score: 6/10 (Interesting idea, weak execution. The airlock scene alone saves it from mediocrity.)

Buy Advice: Wait for Deep Sale (Grab it at $5-10 or on Game Pass if available)

The Bottom Line: Event[0] is what happens when a grad school thesis becomes a commercial game—ambitious, clever, and over before you can care.