The Missing Rune

The Missing Rune is a first-person psychological horror puzzle game. You play a low-level researcher at the O.B.J. Foundation, stationed at a control panel outside a containment cell. Your job is to banish demonic entities using rune incantations — without ever looking directly at one.

THE RULE

Look directly at an entity and it tunnels in through your eyes. Look away and it slips in behind you. Hold it at the very edge of your vision, and keep it there.

THE SHIFT

Six shifts, six cycles each. Every cycle runs in two phases.

MANIFESTATION. The shield opens and the entity appears. Hold your peripheral gaze for thirty seconds while it tries to anchor itself into reality. As it does, things happen in the cell, the lights change color, sounds come through the microphone, your vision corrupts, and eventually the entity starts speaking to you. Memorize all of it. The glass absorbs one mistake, after it breaks, the next one is fatal.

QUANTUM. The entity vanishes and it’s safe to look down. Open the Rune Operation Manual, work out which entity you’re holding, and apply a modifier for everything you witnessed, in the order the manual gives them. Then enter your three-rune answer on the console. You have two minutes.

Whatever you enter becomes the starting sequence for the next cycle, so a mistake follows you. Some rune combinations are fatal on input, and the manual buries that warning on the back page.

ESCALATION

Shift one is guided. After that the Foundation stops holding your hand. Entities strong enough to talk will tell you things about your handler. Perforations open in your vision that can only be closed by staring straight into them which means taking your eyes off the entity. The facility loses power. And on the final shift, someone replaces your manual with one you’ve never seen.

FEATURES

• Six-shift story campaign, fully voiced over the intercom

• A real in-universe manual you open and read answers are never on screen

• Three entity types, four categories of anomaly, and a final encounter that rewrites the rules

• No weapons, no combat. Observation, memory, and deduction only.

• Steam achievements

Photosensitivity warning: contains flashing lights, strobing effects, and sudden loud noises.

INCIDENT REPORT | 001

C. 1971, the O.B.J. Foundation unearthed an ancient churchyard called "The Church of the Missing Rune" and built a facility around the consecrated grounds. Among the ruins were fragments of a book: "The Grimoire of Runes." Pieced together, it gave instructions on how to begin the second coming.

The Foundation has always renounced religion. But this book gave them pause. Inside were writings from Foundation members who had never seen it, and from members who don’t exist, highlights and annotations already on the pages before the pages were found, done exactly the way the O.B.J. instructs its researchers to annotate them. There must be some reason.

The researchers followed the instructions. A rift opened, and from the white glow came the sound of trumpets, until the trumpets became screaming and the rift turned to blood. Things came through. Researcher ████ ██████ was engulfed by the crimson vortex.

Every entity known to have escaped has since been contained. Sending them back is up to you, and to the several predecessors who failed before.

FIELD NOTES: Researcher names may be redacted to prevent cognito-transmission. It is unknown whether cognito-transmission is possible, or whether possession is contagious. The board recognizes it as a serious threat and it will be treated as such.