Pipes.exe is a co-op horror game about the world's favourite screensaver

It is the year 2026, and for computer touchers that means only one thing: we're going back. We're going back to before AI, before Office 365 and Game Pass upsells during the Windows installation process, before someone spilled glue on your taskbar and locked it rigidly in place. We're going back to the jagged OSes of old.

You can take that either as an imploration to adopt Linux (which it is) or as interest in Pipes.exe (which it also is), the co-op horror climbing game/operating system that just got its world premiere at the PC Gaming Show.

The setup is this: it's the '90s, you're a QA tester at a software firm working on its own OS, and all the world is young and beautiful. Your goal—and the goal of up to three of your friends—is to hunt about for bugs by clambering about a space that looks very much like a certain old Windows screensaver. You can also clamber on your friends. Or on anything. See that pipe? You can climb it.

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Once you've gathered up the data you need, you've gotta rush back to the exit. Or get killed by one of the enemies in the OS with you, I suppose. Getting killed is an option too.

The conceit at the heart of the game is that a gaggle of freethinking '90s devs accidentally invented an OS that defies the laws of physics and whose UX is so realistic that dying in QA will kill you stone-dead in real life. So I guess it's also partly a biography of Linus Torvalds. The vibes are very good: like if the Microsoft Excel elevator ad had faded bloodstains on the walls, and I love a game that lets me climb my pals.

So I'll be keeping an eye on this. You can too over on Steam, where the game is set to hit in Q3 of this year.

Check out everything revealed at the PC Gaming Show.

One of Josh's first memories is of playing Quake 2 on the family computer when he was much too young to be doing that, and he's been irreparably game-brained ever since. His writing has been featured in Vice, Fanbyte, and the Financial Times. He'll play pretty much anything, and has written far too much on everything from visual novels to Assassin's Creed. His most profound loves are for CRPGs, immersive sims, and any game whose ambition outstrips its budget. He thinks you're all far too mean about Deus Ex: Invisible War.