THE EIGHTH KETYL

A sealed Victorian distillation column, eight glass plates high, lit by nothing but the thing you are.

You are a ketyl radical — a ketone that has taken one electron too many. It is a real chemical: sodium benzophenone ketyl, deep blue-violet, and chemists keep one alive in a sealed still because its colour is the signal that the solvent is dry. It dies the instant it meets water.

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

Something mucous has taken hold on the inside of the glass. It weeps.

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How to play

One plate is one turn of the loop.

1. Arrive. You rise through the riser onto a plate. The chemist says something over the radio. The growths here are already weeping.
2. Survive. Droplets fall and spread into pools. Standing in water raises your wetness; out of it you dry, slowly. At full wetness you are quenched, and the run is over.
3. Purge. Discharge throws your charge forward in a half-circle and burns the mucus. It costs charge. Charge comes back slowly on its own, and in a lump from the sodium nodes scattered on the plate.
4. Evade. Surge is a short dash with a moment of immunity in it — how you cross a pool, or get out from under a drip.
5. Ascend. With the last growth on the plate gone, the riser lights. Stand in it and commit.

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

Win: purge the eighth plate. The still seals and the solvent goes deep blue. Lose: wetness reaches maximum, and the laboratory begins the ninth.

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Controls

Every action works on a keyboard, on a controller and under a thumb.

Action	Mouse + keyboard	Controller	Touch
Drift across the plate	W A S D	left stick	left on-screen stick
Look around the column	move the mouse (hold right button)	right stick	drag on the right of the screen
Discharge	left mouse button	right trigger	Discharge button
Surge	Space	south face (A / Cross)	Surge button
Ascend a lit riser	E	west face (X / Square)	Ascend button
Pause	Esc	Start	Pause button

In the menus

Action	Mouse + keyboard	Controller	Touch
Move the selection	W / S, or hover with the mouse	left stick or d-pad	on-screen stick, or tap a row
Choose	Space, or click	south face (A / Cross)	Confirm button
Go back	Backspace	east face (B / Circle)	Back button
Resume	Esc	Start	Resume button

Whatever is selected is outlined in violet, so a controller, a keyboard and a mouse never disagree about what you are about to choose.

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What the screen tells you

• The ladder, down the left edge — the eight plates. The lit rung is where you are; the amber ones are behind you.
• The plate card, top right — which plate, and how many growths are left on it, as a number and as a row of pips.
• Charge, across the bottom — the unpaired electron. Discharging spends it.
• Wetness, below it — how close the water is to putting you out. When it turns and starts to pulse, get out of the water.

Every line anyone speaks is also printed on screen, so nothing is lost to a muted device or a noisy room.

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A note on the chemistry

Benzophenone ketyl really is the standard test for a dry solvent, and it really is that colour. The blue means the solvent is dry. Everything else here — the eight plates, the bubble caps, the reboiler below and the condenser above — is how a fractionating still is actually built. The growths are not.