BYOD (n-n, entry ID 2254)
Don't let the "micro" in the subtitle scare you off: it uses the house-made-out-of-a-shipping-container design philosophy where all the important amenities are packed into one room.
BYOD makes a great impression right off the bat with a DOS-inspired landing page. It includes a couple nice little “feelies”, and I liked the IBM-PC-looking web font. (Incidentally, I also liked that the web font is actually included in the download package. Sometimes authors use resources from Google Fonts that don’t work if you try to play the game without Internet access.) If you aren’t familiar with DOS or don’t care, you just have to click the word PLAY that flashes white when you first open the page. Everybody wins! The subsequent page that has the interpreter on it is sadly a little default-theme-looking, but hey, I’ll take what I can get.
The plot of the game is that you’re a new intern at a big tech company, but they didn’t actually get your desk or computer ready yet, so you just have to putter around the reception area with your personal smartphone trying to get SOMETHING useful accomplished. (Hence: Bring Your Own Device.) Helping you on this quest is VFS, an app that lets you hack things in your vicinity with a couple of vaguely-Unix-inspired commands.
BYOD turns out to be one of those games that introduces a central mechanic, explores that mechanic a little bit, and doesn’t overstay its welcome. Like I said in the intro, it’s short but well-implemented! Both of the puzzles are easy enough to solve, but they still made me feel a little bit clever for figuring them out. Everything’s nice and fleshed out with object descriptions, it responds to a bunch of common joke commands like JUMP and XYZZY, and it’s got two different endings you can get.
In summary: good game, recommend! If you’re stuck, remember that you can type I to check your inventory.