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Side Effects is a turn-based psychological game that explores the tension of decision-making under unknown conditions. Two subjects participate in an isolated experiment where their only interaction is through the consumption of pills—each carrying an unknown outcome. The rules are minimal, the environment sterile, and the stakes are survival. What appears to be a simple game of turns gradually reveals deeper systems of risk, endurance, and mental pressure.
Each round allows players to act by swallowing a pill, using an item, or waiting. Pills are not labeled, and their effects remain hidden until activated. Some effects take place instantly, others accumulate or reveal themselves after several turns. The growing uncertainty is tracked by a tolerance meter, which represents how well the player’s body is handling the build-up. As this meter increases, so does the danger, creating a slow but inevitable sense of collapse.
There are no health bars, enemies, or action sequences. Side Effects focuses entirely on quiet interaction—watching, calculating, choosing. The opponent is also playing to survive, and reading their strategy becomes just as important as choosing your own. Do they know something you don’t? Are they taking a risk or bluffing? Over time, the game transforms into a quiet duel where observation and restraint matter as much as courage.
What makes Side Effects unusual is how it uses absence to create presence. There’s no soundtrack guiding your mood. There are no facial expressions or voice lines. Just sterile lights, clinical silence, and the hum of anticipation. Every move feels like it could shift the entire match, and every pause stretches into something heavier than it should be. The game doesn’t rely on horror—it relies on suggestion.
Side Effects asks one question again and again: how far are you willing to go into the unknown? With each pill swallowed, control slips slightly away, and the boundaries between survival and submission blur. In this environment, victory doesn’t always mean outlasting the other player—it might simply mean understanding the system before it consumes you.
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