8bit Salvage

The shop. A tiny three-person salvage operation. Bob owns it — supremely confident, and reliably wrong about how everything works. Randy invented every machine on the floor, and quietly slides Bob a correction note whenever he explains one. You're the new hire. You do the actual work. The work. Retired game sprites drift in and pile up against the magnet in the middle of the floor. Hold the spinning brush over one and the pixels come off. The vacuum inside the magnet pulls them up the hose, and at the end of the shift you sell the salvage. It is genuinely calm and oddly satisfying — every pass leaves the sprite visibly cleaner, and watching the mess disappear is its own reward. Then Randy invents something. Acidic goo splashes onto a pile and soaks through it while you're working the other side of the floor. Roller brushes bulldoze whole stacks. You stop cleaning one sprite at a time and start running a shop that cleans for you. Then it gets away from you. Mutation waves sweep the floor and turn sprites radiant — or electric. Chain lightning jumps between them and even sets some on fire. By the final shifts the screen is a storm of sparks and flying pixels, and it is still, technically, cleaning. All of it is bought. Every machine comes out of a sprawling upgrade tree you fund with your own pay. Early on a single purchase is a whole shift's work and a real decision. Later the tree stops being sensible. Shifts run on a real workweek, too — earn overtime, unlock Saturdays, get your raise. Some of it is hidden. Randy acquired an abandoned storage unit and came back with eight runes and the broken contraption they were sitting in. He told Bob to keep them apart for safety. Bob hid them around the shop — very well, it turns out — and now they're scattered through the upgrade tree. Find all eight and Randy has a brand-new magnet core built to harness them. He's very excited about it. Bob thinks that's a good sign. Bob's Odds. Bob has a game show now, and you are the only contestant. Every round has a number to hit. Hit it and Bob deals the cards — take your pick of the upgrades on the table, or flip a hidden card to find out what you got after it's yours. Miss the number and the season is over. The Odd Balls you earn along the way buy Randy's inventions forever, so every season starts stronger than the last. No two seasons play alike. The scale. Every round runs on Randy's scale. Fill it and you pass. Fill it again and it reloads with a bigger number and a better prize, and your Odd Balls keep counting for as long as the pixels keep coming. Bob calls the round live from the corner. Bob is not always right, but he's usually entertaining. Two ways to play. The Early Years is where the shop began: a deliberately compressed campaign with a story all its own, finishable in a sitting. Bob's Odds is the show. The free demo has all of The Early Years and the first three episodes of the show. Certified by the American Sprite Humane Association: No sprites are harmed in this shop. We only take the pixels off.