Press kit
Mainframe Escape
Everything here is free to use in articles, videos and streams, with no permission needed. If you want something that is not here, ask and I will make it.
Factsheet
| Title | Mainframe Escape |
|---|---|
| Developer | Tiltedlem, a one-person studio |
| Contact | chris@tiltedlem.com |
| Based in | United States |
| Release | In development. Alpha playable on itch.io; Steam at beta. |
| Platform | Windows |
| Engine | Godot 4 |
| Price | Free during alpha |
| Website | tiltedlem.com |
Description
Short: A twin-stick roguelite set inside a PC. You are a process escaping an infected machine, and heat is what kills you.
Long: Mainframe Escape puts you inside a computer that has been taken over. You play a process fighting down through the machine one board at a time, killing malware built out of the hardware around it. Every shot you fire heats the machine. Heat is the whole game: run hot and your rounds hit harder, push it too far and the weapon locks out and it costs you a core.
Components you find stack into modifiers that change what your rounds actually do, and a round is drawn as whatever it has become, so you read your build off your own fire. Commit to one architecture and it pays you for committing.
Beat the firewall on the socket and you can leave, banking everything you mined on the way down. Refuse, and there are floors underneath that are built for the exact build you committed to.
Features
- Heat as the resource, not ammunition: the reward for running hot is damage.
- Builds you can see, because the round is drawn as what it does.
- Extraction: leave and bank it, or go deeper and risk it.
- Firewalls that each ask a different question rather than having more health.
- Levels dressed as their own places: furnace, coolant, frost, rot, storm, arcade.
Contact
- chris@tiltedlem.com — press, streams, anything
- itch.io/tiltedlem — builds you can play
- twitch.tv/tiltedlem — it gets built live
- tiltedlem.substack.com — the devlog




