The Eighth Ketyl

A ketyl radical is a real thing: a ketone handed one electron too many. The famous one — sodium benzophenone ketyl — is a deep blue-violet, and chemists keep it alive in a sealed still because it dies the instant it meets water. Its colour is the signal that the solvent is dry.

You are the eighth ketyl this laboratory has made. The seven before you drowned.

The still is an eight-plate distillation column of black glass and tarnished brass, and something mucous has taken hold on the inside of it. The growths weep. Burn every growth on a plate and the riser above you opens. Reach the eighth plate, purge it, and the still seals.

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One plate is one turn

Arrive. You rise through the riser onto the next plate. The chemist says something over the radio. The growths here are already weeping.

Survive. Droplets fall and pools spread where they land. Standing in water raises your wetness; out of it you dry, slowly. At full wetness you are quenched, and the laboratory begins the ninth.

Purge. Your discharge throws the unpaired electron forward in a half-circle and burns the mucus off the glass. It costs charge. Charge comes back slowly, and sodium nodes on the plate return it in a lump.

Ascend. With the last growth gone the riser lights. Take it.

Eight times, harder each time: more growths, faster weeping, fewer nodes.

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Controls

Everything is playable on a keyboard and mouse, on a touchscreen, and on a controller — including every menu.

Action	Keyboard + mouse	Touch	Controller
Drift across the plate	W A S D	left stick, on screen	left stick
Look around	mouse	drag, right half	right stick
Discharge	left mouse	the bolt button	right trigger
Surge (a dash, briefly immune)	Space	the chevron button	A / Cross
Ascend a lit riser	E	the arrow button	X / Square
Pause	Escape	the menu button	Start

In menus: move the focus with W/S, the left stick or a tap, choose with Space or A, and leave with Backspace or B.

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What to look at

• The shaft. The composition is vertical — plate edges receding upward, brass rings catching the violet, and you as the only light source in a sealed black interior.
• The riser. Watch it light when a plate goes clean. The climb through it is the shot the game keeps returning to.
• The chemist. She has lost seven of you and talks to this one the way you talk to something you expect to lose. Every line is spoken aloud and written on screen.
• The instruments. The column's own readout keeps count of the plates behind you, and it is not encouraging.

Made in the Zero engine, in a world you can open in a browser.