SYSADMIN Hell

Welcome to your new job. You're already behind.

You are the only IT person at Pinnacle Synergy Group. There's a queue. It's already full. Users are panicking, Management is angry, and the printer is hostile.

Read the ticket. Fix the problem. Don't make it worse.

Every ticket is a little puzzle: the answer is usually in the text, if you read carefully. Pick the right quick fix and it's gone. Pick the wrong one and it grows. Not sure? Hammer "Work on it" the slow way.

• 160+ hand-written tickets that get stranger as the company grows

• Follow-ups, when users write back with a brand new problem

• SLAs, priorities and a Chaos meter that triggers incidents when the backlog gets out of hand

A whole desktop from 1998

The entire game is a working late-90s desktop. Drag windows, minimise them to the taskbar, open programs from the Start menu, and live inside the HellDesk ticket queue, HellMail Express, Server Manager and Add/Remove Automation.

Automate everything. Watch it break.

• 13 automations, from the Auto-Responder to the Script Cluster, and every one fails in its own way: reply loops, a blue-screened coffee machine, an intern who unplugs servers, a chatbot handing out confident advice

• Hire junior admins with real quirks (Night Owl, Cowboy, Printer Whisperer...). Give pep talks, order pizza, and watch them burn out

• Keep servers alive as load grows, or drown in "IS IT DOWN??" tickets

Or do it all from the command line

The HellDOS Prompt runs the whole job by typing: QUEUE, FIX 12 2, REBOOT MAIL-01, BUY COFFEE. It also knows a few things it shouldn't. Try PING FLOOR4.

Every day is different

• 10 kinds of day: Patch Tuesday, Audit Day, Board Visit, Heatwave, Full Moon...

• Branching major incidents: ransomware, a reply-all storm that becomes self-aware, a printer hostage situation

• Worm outbreaks to contain, objectives from Management, and emails that want an answer

Something is wrong with this company

Tickets arrive from nobody. The new hires don't blink. There's a server nobody installed, and an email from the previous sysadmin warns you not to reboot it. The building has three floors. Please do not go to Floor 4.

• Multiple endings, and one that's well hidden

• Three difficulties, plus contract clauses that trade pain for Experience

• HellDesk University: permanent perks that carry from career to career

• The Daily Shift: the same day for everyone, on a leaderboard

• 50 achievements, a sarcastic office assistant, five tracks of procedural hold music, and Bugsweeper (on company time)

Welcome aboard.