Beta 0.1.0 · Windows

Within Reach Lucky Strike

You have the keys, the roster, and four hours to close up alone. The lanes do not stay empty.

Download the beta Play Serpent 3.95 GB · Windows 10/11

The premise

A closing shift
that does not close

Lucky Strike Bowling has been trading since the fifties and looks it. You are Lawrence, and tonight the late shift is yours: run the floor, clear the lanes, kill the lights, lock the back, go home.

The work is ordinary and the building is not. Sweep the concourse. Bag the rubbish. Reset the pinsetter when it jams, because it always jams. Every task is the kind of small, dull thing that keeps your eyes on the floor and your back to the room.

By the time you notice you are not alone, you are four rooms deep and the front doors are behind whatever is between you and them.

There is no weapon and no fighting. There is a torch with a failing battery, a set of keys that opens some things, and a service alley that might get you to your car. What there is a great deal of is distance — between rooms, between lights, between you and the way out.

The bowling alley seen from the road at night, its neon sign lit above an empty car park

The night, in order

Four hours,
one way out

The shift runs in sequence. Each part of it takes you further from the front door.

01 — Floor

Cleaning tasks

Sweep, bag, wipe down, restock. The roster is on the board and every item on it is somewhere else in the building.

02 — Lanes

The pinsetter

Lane machinery from another era, still running because nobody replaced it. Clearing a jam means climbing in behind the pins.

03 — Rear

The back alley

Bins out, gate shut. The gate has not been oiled in years and the sound carries a long way down a wet alley.

04 — Out

The stalker

Something has been following the route you took. It does not hurry, and it does not lose you. Your car is across the lot.

Screens

Captured in engine

The bowling alley concourse: rates board above the counter, booths along the right, the Lucky Strike neon still lit — Concourse — last hour of trading

Diner booths in mint and pink vinyl beneath the Atomic Burger menu board — The diner

A convenience store front glowing across a wet pavement at night — Across the road

A bus shelter lit from above on an empty street, graffiti on the hoarding behind — The stop outside

A dumpster in the service alley under a single wall light — Service alley

The back of the building at night with the city rising behind it — Rear of the building

Two headlights burning in near-total darkness — The car park

From the office terminal

Serpent

Press a key to start Best: 0

WASD or arrow keys to steer.

There is a computer in the back office, and somebody left this running on it.

It is a real machine in the game — you can sit down at it mid-shift and play, which is either a small mercy or a way of not going back out onto the floor for another minute.

This is the same toy, in the browser. Click the window and steer with WASD or the arrow keys. Your best score is kept on this device only.

Get it

Play the beta

This is an early build handed out for testing. It is complete from the first task to the last shot, and it will have rough edges.

Download — Windows · 3.95 GB

VersionBeta 0.1.0
PlatformWindows 10 / 11, 64-bit
Download3.95 GB zipped
Installed4.3 GB
EngineUnreal Engine 5.8
LengthOne sitting

First run

Windows will say “Windows protected your PC”. Click More info, then Run anyway. The build is not code-signed — that is the only reason the warning appears. Extract the whole folder before running it.

A closing shiftthat does not close

Four hours,one way out