Layer8Problem

Welcome to Layer8Problem – the ultimate sysadmin simulator!

You are Miller, the only competent IT administrator at GlobalCorp. Your job would be great, and quiet, if it weren't for the users. Because the biggest security risk in any company is always sitting about 30 cm in front of the screen – the notorious "Layer 8 problem".

Your goal? Survive the everyday office madness until you can finally clock off at 16:30. Without getting sacked. Without setting fire to the server room. And above all: without running out of coffee.

How does it play? Layer8Problem is a satirical, text-based decision game with resource management. Every email, every phone call and every trip to the coffee machine forces a decision on you. Do you handle it professionally, or do you take the path of maximum laziness? Every answer you give moves the three values you survive on:

• Aggro: Stupid questions drive your blood pressure up. Reach 100 % and you lose it completely, and your monitor goes out of the window.

• Laziness: Why do today what you could simply ignore? Dodge the work too often and the boss gets suspicious – and punishes your decisions harder.

• Boss Radar: Quietly browsing the internet or sabotaging a colleague is funny – right up until the boss notices. Fill the radar and you get a written warning, then the sack.

Two ways to play

Working Day. One shift, 08:00 to 16:30. Survive until clocking-off time – by the evening everything is forgotten, and tomorrow you start from zero again.

Working Week. Monday to Friday in one go, and here nothing is forgotten. What you leave lying around today is still lying there tomorrow. Your backpack comes with you, so does your reputation, and your laziness certainly does. The valve and the written warning come once per week instead of once per day – blow up on Tuesday and you have no second chance until Friday. And on Friday, from 15:00, the weekly meeting is waiting. Nobody escapes the weekly meeting.

What is waiting for you at the office?

• Over 1,300 events: From the "accidentally deleted internet" through burning printers to the Nigerian prince in your inbox. You decide whether to help, to troll, or simply to hang up.

• IT emergencies against the clock: 38 incidents with a countdown. When the ransomware hits or the cooling in the server room fails, the timer starts. Solve it before the time runs out!

• The office ecosystem: Meet colleagues drawn with affection and no mercy. Rescue Kevin, the apprentice, from total meltdown, endure the buzzwords of Chantal from marketing, argue with Frau Elster from accounts, and learn that Egon the caretaker is best bribed with duct tape.

• Collect legendary loot: 32 items – dusty USB sticks, energy drinks, ancient Windows 95 manuals. With the right item in your inventory, hopeless situations can be solved "creatively" (a hammer is, after all, just another troubleshooting tool).

The building remembers

• Office politics (the reputation system): Every action has social consequences. Do you cover for Kevin when he takes the network down, or do you grass him up to the boss? Your standing with the seven colleagues – from the grumpy caretaker to the choleric CEO – shapes your working day. A good reputation unlocks story paths and favours; colleagues you have annoyed will make your life hell.

• Decisions with an echo: The machine you had Kevin reinstall turns up in the rack hours later – with a dragon sticker and a program selling compute power overseas. Leave Gabi hanging and you will find a drawer in the tea kitchen that was not there before.

• The knowledge: Miller writes down what he finds out about this building – about the colleagues, about the people who keep calling, about rooms, and about affairs nobody started that are running all the same. The pages fill themselves, across weeks and fresh starts alike.

• Reading for after hours: A diary that narrates your day every evening. A company chronicle with blank pages at the back, which Miller fills in by hand. A noticeboard carrying notices you caused yourself. And an intranet that reports, in the finest corporate prose, what you got up to today.

Choose your working day

Not every day at the office is the same. Match the challenge to your nerves: play "Friday" (easy) for a relaxed run, take "Wednesday" (normal) for the classic madness, or face "Monday" (hard) – where the flood of tickets is merciless, warnings are scarcer, and the boss forgives nothing. For the Working Week you choose something else instead: how rested Miller turns up on Monday – rested, irritated, or in need of a holiday.

English and German

The game exists in full in both languages – not just the menus, but every single event, the inbox, the phone chat, the intranet and the knowledge. You can switch in the middle of a run: the save file does not depend on the language, so the week carries on exactly where it was.

Steam features

Unlock 27 achievements, compare your failures against other sysadmins in the global statistics, and use cross-platform cloud saves to carry on the fight against the users seamlessly – even in the middle of a Working Week. Your friends list, incidentally, gets to see whether you are currently hiding in the server room or surviving the Synergy Gala.

***

The idea for Layer8Problem came to me in a completely pointless, far too long kick-off meeting at work. What started out of sheer boredom as a tiny text adventure in a CMD window has, over time, become the madness you see here. I develop this game entirely on my own, in my spare time, driven by a great deal of heart. Buying it supports the continued development and future updates directly.