The player plays as, Sebastian, who is being offered a job as a soda salesman for Wellspring Soda. However, the position isn't local - it's in Dorisburg, which is a ferry trip away. Once there, he meets various people, parties, ineffectively tries to sell soda, and finds out about the modifiable, and potentially non-Euclidian, nature of the world.
The game contains examples of:
- Adam Smith Hates Your Guts: It's relatively easy to hack the finance server and give yourself millions or billions of dollars, yet having this much money never gives you any influence.
- Big Bad: The Ministry, and Monad.
- Downer Ending: Sebastian rescues Pixie's boyfriend, thus guaranteeing Let's Just Be Friends. The Ministry, despite one of their most important computers is destroyed, remains as powerful as ever. Sebastian is then either forced to flee Dorisberg, or be erased from existence by Monad.
- Gameplay and Story Segregation: once you have the hang of programming, Sebastian has practically godlike powers, and it's implied that many of the other hackers in the game are as good or better than Sebastian. This should in theory result in an utterly surreal and possibly collapsed society, yet none of the other characters even think of doing what Sebastian does. Dude, Where's My Respect?
- Inside a Computer System: Implied by the "bits have replaced atoms" line, and the way in which you can modify some objects. But you can go a level deeper using the "Slurp" function in Sprak, which allows teleportation by moving from a given thing to anything that is connected to.
- In-Universe Game Clock: And various things are scheduled to it, such as the location of characters. Luckily, you're told in dialogue when plot-relevant things are scheduled.
- Just Friends: Pixie; in a deconstruction of the Romance Arc, Sebastian acts Entitled to Have You because he's The Protagonist. When he rescues her boyfriend, his relationship with her remains as such.
- Now, Where Was I Going Again?: There is no thing that will take notes for you, and there are quite a few cases where time can affect things. Make sure to keep note of that "Be at (location) at (time)"-style dialogue when and where it appears.
- One-Steve Limit: A natural consequence of No Full Name Given below.
- No Full Name Given: All characters are identified by their first name.
- Programming Game: This is what "modifiers" are used for. There are quite a few things which run on Sprak, the in-game language, behind the scenes - and things like drinks also run on it.
- Reality Warper: Sebastian, or you, or anyone with a Modifier.
- Retraux: The game has low-resolution pixelated textures, giving it the look of a late PlayStation game.
- Stalker with a Crush: To even start the Programming Game it's necessary to follow Pixie to her workplace against her will. Although she's creeped out by you following her, letting Felix see she knows you is the only way to be invited to join the Lodge.
- This Loser Is You: a technical genius who is devastated to learn that, in spite of all his knowledge and power, he can never get the girl? Not a gamer stereotype at all. No, sir.
- What the Hell, Player?: because of the game's focus on player as opposed to character ability, if you have existing programming skill and knowledge of the plot from previous playthroughs, it's possible to send the "heart.break" message which destroys the villain's plan within a few moments of getting your first Modifier. If you do, Sebastian starts randomly boasting in leet-speak, implying that he's a jerk of a hacker who destroys valuable computers for no reason at all.
- Wide-Open Sandbox: Though you're limited to Dorisburg, Dorisburg has quite a bit to do that is plotted, and if you happen to like programming, and know which computers to modify, quite a few things that weren't.
