Introducing Who Left It On?
A narrative pixel-art game you play for free in your browser, one chapter at a time. This first bulletin tells you what it is about, from the world and the signal to the plant it leads you to. No spoilers.
By Keidegger Silva · After Signal
Updated:
In this bulletin
A world running out of water
Who Left It On? tells the story of a world where water, the most valuable resource there is, is running out. It rains, but nobody can drink that rain. Drinking water is no longer found in nature, it has to be made, and that is why treatment plants became the most valuable thing left.
The shortage has thrown the world into a crisis that is pushing it towards war. It is a made-up world, though not that far away. And it is not a story about heroes. It is about someone who arrives at an abandoned place and tries to understand what happened there.
The Link Network
For years, a network kept the treatment plants of the whole planet connected. It was called the Link Network, and as long as the plants talked to each other, the water kept coming. The game opens by remembering it.
For years, the Link Network kept the world’s treatment plants connected. Then, one by one, they fell silent.
Plants out of service, abandoned systems, signals that stopped answering. Nobody knows yet what happened. The game starts right there, with the world map in the dark.
A signal in your country
Then, in the middle of that silence, one station answers. And it answers in your country, because the opening map settles on the place you are playing from. You arrive at night, in the rain, and the car’s terminal greets you with a notice.
LINK NETWORK · NOTICE
Signal received: PLANT 7. No response for 1,142 days.
Recommendation: do not enter unresponsive facilities.
(These notices exist to be ignored. This is the tutorial.)
Plant 7
Plant 7 is an abandoned water-treatment plant, with tanks, channels, a pond, workshops locked behind gates and a generator that has gone dark. It looks as if nobody has touched it in years. But whoever worked there left things behind. Tools, labelled keys, notices on the walls and notes, lots of notes.
Those notes are the plant’s voice. Some are practical, some are strange, and now and then one even makes you smile in the middle of it all. Read together, they start telling a story nobody explains to you all at once.
Management is calling it a malfunction. I think somebody left something on.
That is where the question in the game’s name comes from. Who left it on? I am not going to answer it here, because that is what the chapter is for.
How you play
- You explore the plant at your own pace. On a computer you move with WASD or the arrow keys and press E to use whatever is near you. On a phone you play with the joystick and by tapping the screen, upright or sideways.
- You pick up objects, read notes and solve small puzzles to bring the plant back to life.
- A task list tells you what is still missing, without holding your hand.
- You can try it without an account. With a free account (email or Google), your game saves by itself and you pick up where you left off, even on another device.
- It comes in Spanish, English, Portuguese, French, Italian, German, Chinese and Japanese.
Chapter 1, “The Abandoned Plant”
The first chapter is ready to play, free and with nothing to download. The story will go on in chapters, and the intention is to release a new one every month or so. I make it calmly and carefully, so I would rather talk about an intention than promise a date.
Where to follow it
I share the news on Discord, on social media and here on the blog. If you like what you see, following us helps a lot more people find it.