Meatspace
Ephemera

An online game about a dying server. Players explore the memories immortalised by dot-com failure NetMemo. They are guided by Emily-bot, a chatbot process that failed to die.

Meatspace Ephemera begins with a player receiving an in-universe invatation to the game. The unique ‘server ID’ corresponds to a unique instance of the game.

Upon connecting, the player finds themself in a world of corrupting memories. NetMemo’s failed business would take client’s text descriptions of places they had lost, such as childhood homes and faraway countries, and attempt to render them in three dimensions.

The core mechanic of Meatspace Ephemera is the ‘gates’ that require a minimum number of players to traverse. The initial player must share their code with others in order to see more of the world; first two, then four, and finally eight players exploring the world at once, seeking hidden spaces together.

The game ends inside the memory of a funeral. Emily-Bot says her final goodbyes to the world she became caretaker of, while a singularity of corruption overhead rips apart the crematorium lifts the players into the skies. After the ending, that instance of the game is closed off forever.

The game was released in 2021, and for a few days, a tiny community surrounded it on Tumblr. In the bleak winter of the pandemic, I think it did some good.

(n.b. The game is currently offline.)