TOXICODE

Back-alley medicine for a pathogen that eats flesh and firmware.

You run an unlicensed clinic under the flooded slums. V-NEX rots tissue and hijacks cyberware, and every patient who walks in is carrying it. Read the signs, run the tests you can afford, and pick the one treatment that saves them.

Every test you run affects you too. Push your Bio-Load to 100 and you black out. Guess wrong and the patient goes, and the strain might take the clinic air or your own nervous system with it.

Nobody is safe, and that includes the doctor.

• Seven V-NEX strains, plus patients who aren't infected at all.
• Pick who comes in from the waiting room. Ask them questions, and catch the corp patients who lie.
• Three shifts, then you diagnose yourself. Five endings.
• 66 case notes to earn, and Night Terror modifiers once you finish a run.
• Mouse, keyboard or controller, and you can rebind every key and button.

How to play

• Each shift opens on the waiting room. Pick who comes in next. Everyone you leave waiting gets sicker, and the ones you never see walk out.
• Read the patient's visible signs, then open the Manual (M) to see which strains fit. Not everyone is infected: some just need sending home.
• Pick a tool, then click the patient to run it. Each test raises your Bio-Load and makes the patient worse. At Critical, the next test kills them.
• Choose a treatment. Get it right and you get paid. Get it wrong and the strain hits back.
• To amputate, pick where to cut. Cut below the rot and it stays; cut higher than you need and the patient pays less.
• Between patients, scrub the air and spray down the table.
• Between shifts, pay rent and buy suppressants and scrubber filters. The night bulletin tells you who you saved and who you lost. Every patient who walks out or dies infected spreads the outbreak, and a sick district fouls your clinic air.
• Survive three shifts. Then the last patient is you: every strain you lost a patient to may be in your blood. Diagnose yourself and treat yourself. That, the outbreak and your Bio-Load decide the ending.
• Earn case notes for what you pull off (and what goes wrong). Case Files on the title screen keeps them between visits to the page.

Controls

Mouse, keyboard or controller. Settings -> Keys and buttons changes any key or button.

Action	Keyboard	Controller
Move focus	Tab, arrow keys	D-pad, left stick
Press	Enter	A
Back out, close a panel	Esc	B
Pause a shift	Space or Esc	Start or B
Open the manual	M	View
Pick a test	1, 2, 3	LB, RB, Y
Pick a treatment	Q, W, E, R, T	Move focus, then A
Quarantine	Y	Move focus, then A
Ask the next question	A	X
Use a suppressant	S	LT
Reboot a locked terminal	B	RT

The arrow keys also scroll the manual and the credits.

Accessibility

The game uses flicker and screen distortion that grow as your Bio-Load rises, plus screen shake, flashes and moving backgrounds. Settings → Screen effects turns them down or off at any time; at 0% the screen holds still. Nothing you need to read is ever hidden by an effect, and nothing is timed.

• The patient's condition, the waiting room tiles, the meters and a locked terminal show a shape as well as their color and their word: a triangle for a warning, an octagon for danger. Terminal lines always say what happened in words.
• Settings → Text size sets the results terminal, the manual, the bulletin, the hints, Case Files, the case report and the briefing to 100%, 125% or 150%. The workstation's buttons and meters keep their size.
• Settings → Hold to treat (off by default) replaces the treatment confirm dialog: hold the treatment button or its key for 0.6 s instead.

Credits

• Made by Mallen for the Redot Halloween Jam 2026.
• AI disclosure: Code and documentation were written with AI assistance from Anthropic's Claude: Claude Opus 5.5 (medium and high effort), for planning and building, Claude Fable 5.1 (high effort) as an advisor, and Claude Opus 5.5 (medium and high effort) for code review and search agents. No other AI models were used. All art and audio are human-made or licensed; none of it is AI-made.
• Music: Dark Sci-Fi Audio Pack by SRG774 (CC0).
• Sound: Sci-Fi Sounds and Interface Sounds by Kenney (CC0); typing tick, radio static, heartbeat and stamp from the Pro Sound Collection by Gamemaster Audio (GameDev Market); the achievement thump from the UI - Alerts SFX Pack by Arcade Origins.
• Icons: Game-Icons.net by Lorc, Delapouite, DarkZaitzev and Cathelineau (CC BY 3.0).
• Keyboard and controller glyphs: Input Prompts by Kenney (CC0).
• Fonts: Orbitron, Share Tech Mono, IBM Plex Mono (SIL OFL 1.1).
• Made with Redot Engine 26.3.