Screenshots
System Clues
CipherStudios · Published by CipherStudios
Last updated 3 Oct 2026
You pick up a laptop on the roadside. Boot it, log in, read emails, scroll chat logs — and NexusCore scandals surface: financial fraud, employee surveillance, an AI performance system. Will you stay a bystander, dig in, or gather evidence yourself? Every keystroke reshapes the fate of the world.
Indie, RPG, Simulation, Strategy · 2026 · More free games
Delve into System Clues, where each key press can change the world. Explore emails and chat logs to uncover financial fraud and AI surveillance at NexusCore in this unique blend of RPG, simulation, and strategy from CipherStudios.
About this game
You picked up a laptop that isn't yours.
The boot splash flickers to life. NexusBIOS. The desktop is spotless — almost too spotless. You were only going to look. But the anonymous email in your inbox, the blinking warnings in your chats, and the post trending in your browser all point to one thing: this company is built on a system it wants no one to see.
System Clues is a story-driven adventure built on desktop-OS simulation, digital investigation, and reasoning-based attribution. You play an anonymous investigator who happens to come into possession of a target device. You move between the NexusBIOS desktop, the terminal, the browser, and the social web — piecing scattered clues into a complete chain of evidence — then lock in your conclusion on the case-reasoning board and decide how it all ends.
Five cases that seem unrelated — and one faint thread running through them all. You play an anonymous investigator who moves between the desktop, the terminal, and the social web, piecing scattered clues into a complete chain of evidence to expose truths carefully hidden from view. The deeper you dig, the clearer it becomes: these cases are not isolated. They point toward one deeper secret — one that may involve you.
Features
A realistic intrusion chain: hacking isn't a button press. Recon (nmap) → brute force (hydra) → injection (sqlmap) → foothold (reverse_shell) → privilege escalation (privesc) → lateral movement (lateral_move) → persistence (persist) — every stage has preconditions and a genuine feedback loop, modeled on real attack chains.
A living public sphere: every move echoes back through Pulse trends, social platforms, and private DMs from colleagues; sometimes the backlash of truth is more dangerous than silence.
Reasoning-based attribution: evidence isn't free. Answer six evidence-reasoning questions on the case board; a composite grade of deduction accuracy + evidence collected + restraint decides which ending you walk toward.
Multiple endings & moral alignment: the balance of order, neutrality, and rebellion — together with how clean or destructive your investigation was — decides the identity you walk away with. What that identity is, you'll have to find out for yourself.
An immersive desktop simulation: NexusBIOS ships with mail, chat, browser, wallet, and a task board. One laptop is a whole society in miniature.
Once the truth starts coming together, you can't stop it. Just how far are you willing to go?
System Requirements
Will my PC run this? →Minimum
- OS *: Win 7,8,10,11
- Processor: lntel: Core i3-530
- Memory: 2 GB RAM
- Graphics: Nvidia: GeForce 9600GT
- Storage: 2 GB available space
Recommended
- OS *: Win 7,8,10,11
- Processor: lntel: Core i5-3300
- Memory: 4 GB RAM
- Graphics: Nvidia: GeForce 560
- Storage: 4 GB available space
Supported Languages
Latest news
Patch NotesOfficial
Multiple player-reported issues fixed
Social engineering panel: The left column no longer grows endlessly as you progress. It now shows only the templates and recipients relevant to the current chapter, with a height safeguard, so the "Send Email" button at the bottom can no longer be pushed off-screen. Stricter achievement unlocks: Chat and email reading stats are now counted per chapter, and only count when you actually read new content. The cases of "unlocking all four chapters' reading achievements right after the tutorial" or "opening one page and unlocking every chat and email achievement" are fixed. No more carry-over between runs: Starting a new game (or wiping progress) now fully clears run-scoped state from the previous run, including obtained credentials and achievement-related counters. This also fixes two related problems: the hidden-ending condition being "already satisfied at the start", and a blocking bug where side quests would never generate again after starting a new game, with the accept button left locked. A new game now plays as a fresh run from the beginning. Chat timestamps show dates: Chat timestamps changed from "HH:mm" to "MM-DD HH:mm", making conversation timelines easier to follow. Clearer hidden-ending hints: The ending gallery used to tell you "achieve a hidden moral route" for every hidden ending, even though the investigative and technical endings actually require something else entirely. Each hidden ending now gives its own hint, and endings that require social engineering (a disguise attempt) are labelled as a Social Engineering goal instead of pointing you at the evidence board. Note: a few other reports were verified as working as designed (for example, the burst pacing of certain messages)Read full article on Community Announcements (guohong)Patch NotesOfficial
Upcoming Update — Preview
Thanks for the thoughtful community feedback. We're preparing an update with the following (this is a preview of what's coming, not yet released):Fixing community-reported bugs: we're triaging and resolving the issues recently reported; these fixes will ship in this update.New mode selection: after the update, before starting the game you'll be able to choose one of two playstyles —Exploration Mode: the current gameplay, unchanged — investigate freely, collect clues, reach your ending.Decryption Mode: a brand-new penetration-style playthrough where every action you take uncovers more story content. The deeper you go, the more at risk you are.⚠️ Note: once you pick a mode, that playstyle stays active for the entire run. Only starting a New Game will let you choose again.On the timeline: because this is a larger update that adds support for new gameplay and mechanics, it's still in development, debugging, and testing to make sure it ships stable. We'll push it out as soon as it's ready and will post here the moment it's live. Thanks for your patience.Read full article on Community Announcements (guohong)Patch NotesOfficial
Per-interface font size adjustment added
You can now adjust the font size of each app interface separately. Go to Settings → UI Font Size, pick the interface, and drag the slider on the right to change its text size (80%–150%). Changes take effect immediately and are saved with your game save; the preview on the right reflects them in real time, and "Reset to Default" restores the original size. The Watchdog has its own font size as well. The Terminal font size is still set separately under Settings → Terminal.Read full article on Community Announcements (guohong)Patch NotesOfficial
Improvements
First launch now runs fullscreen — On a fresh install the game starts in fullscreen at your display's native (highest) resolution, instead of a small window. Your choice still sticks: change the window mode or resolution in Settings at any time, and it will be remembered on the next launch.Read full article on Community Announcements (guohong)Patch NotesOfficial
Bug Fixes
- Watchdog no longer disappears after starting a new game — The Watchdog companion could flash on screen for a moment and then vanish as soon as a new game started, and beginning another game would not bring it back, even with the toggle enabled in Settings. It now reliably returns to its default spot in the bottom-right corner on every new game, and its position and size still carry over between sessions. - Full localization for Settings → Personalization — The personalization page (wallpaper and account avatars) previously fell back to Chinese no matter which language was selected. Every label, button, hint, and success/error message on that page now follows the selected language, across all five supported languages.Read full article on Community Announcements (guohong)
