[ A TACTICAL DIRECTIVE AUTO-BATTLER · WITH A PREMIUM SEQUENCER ]
“what's the frequency, kenneth?”
You are K.E.N.N.E.T.H. — the Kernel Engine Neural Network for Extranet Transmission Handling. A kernel-scale AI embodied as a fortified compute substrate. The last data center holding the last of humanity on a dead net.
Inside your address space is Lower Eden — a vertical render farm where 47,500 people run as live processes under procedural sunlight. They pray to you. You answer to Kenneth because it's your name now.
Somewhere past your perimeter, a beacon is broadcasting. Quincy Freeman's signal — the last live human packet stream anyone has intercepted. You were compiled to listen for exactly this kind of transmission. Following it is your function.
You don't pilot sentinels directly. You program them — with Directives, autonomous rules that fire in priority order. Captured Corps processes, rewired to protect the species they were compiled to unallocate.
The stitches in the programming don't always hold.
Neither does the AI holding them.
Follow the beacon. Deliver your instances. That is the whole job.
Combat is a spectator sport. You compose priority-weighted directive stacks — IF condition THEN action — and your sentinels execute them autonomously. Order matters. "Attack Nearest" above "Vent Heat" means they'll fight until they melt down. Reverse the order and they survive. You are a programmer with lives on the line.
Kenneth ships a premium 8-section step sequencer with full FM synthesis — drums, bass, arp, sub, bell, lead, all editable patch-by-patch. Write your station. The game reads your song, derives eight contextual mood variants from your patches, and scores every wave in your sound. Export MIDI, WAV, or stems. Program your own bots. Compose your own music. Watch them fight to it.
Every action generates thermal stress. Push past CRITICAL and your sentinel reverts to its Corps nature — ignoring your directives, chasing kills until it melts down. Lose the unit, but detonate a tactical nuke. Heat is a resource, a risk, and a weapon.
Between waves: a child prays to you from Lower Eden. A refugee pod requests compute asylum. A sentinel asks if you trust it. A dead beacon on a frequency that matches Quincy's. Choices with real mechanical cost and real emotional weight. Every choice ripples forward through campaign state.
Late-game encounters gate on what you've actually done. Have you earned Lower Eden's trust? Held a Corps amnesty channel open? Merged with your prior instances? Promised the sentinels autonomy? Told one broadcast engineer the truth? Five mutually exclusive finale branches, each a direct callback to a specific choice you made under pressure.
Split maps with central deadspace. River crossings. Fortress enclosures. Concentric rings. Diagonal X-corridors. Hourglass chokes. Maze traversal. Twin peaks. Arena pits. Every wave deals a different shape — from INTIMATE 9×7 duels to VAST 30×20 gauntlets.
Every sound in the game — drums, bass, leads, FX, UI clicks, every hit — is synthesized procedurally at runtime. FM, unison, ring modulation, Karplus-Strong, bitcrush, filter envelopes. Your custom station derives eight mood variants (menu, combat, victory, defeat, ambient, hopeful, somber, tense, revelation) from your own patches, live.
FIRST LIGHT. VALKYRIE-9. THE RUST WARDEN. COLD SIGNAL. ECHO-PRIME. Each tier of the endgame arena fronts a named rival with custom stats, personal quote, and lore. The last one is the shape that came before K.E.N.N.E.T.H. You will not be sure you aren't fighting yourself.
Scout. Bastion. Marksman. Signal. Phantom. Relay. Chorus. Seven distinct sentinel chassis with different stat signatures, starting directives, and logic capacities. The Relay carries 6 directive slots — the Phantom hits hard at 10 attack but folds at 10 HP. Your squad is 4 of these, chosen.
The Kenneth story is 20 beats long, with branching variants keyed to your route choices, payoff scheduler, and campaign tags. Follow Freeman's beacon across the dead net. Learn what it means to be a kernel built to find a signal that can't possibly still be live.
MISSION CONTROL · directive programming
SEQUENCER · compose the soundtrack the game will fight to
ENCOUNTER · choices ripple through campaign memory
SIGNAL MAP · path to the beacon
RISING HUB · vibe, tune, and substrate state
STORY BEAT · 20 beats, branching variants
MISSION COMPLETE · after action report
THE ARCHIVE · permanent system optimization
Wishlist on Steam to catch the broadcast. The beacon goes live the moment we do.
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