Made in a day for Garbage Jam #6 — theme: Digital Hell.

what the HELL.exe it is

A fake operating system that belongs to Hell's IT department. There is a start menu. There are programs. There are popups, and there will be more popups, and that is the arrangement management has with its partners.

Four programs ship with this workstation:

• EULAtxt — Please read the following agreement carefully. All 56 clauses. You must scroll to the bottom. We mean it. The ACCEPT button would rather you didn't.
• CAPTCHA.exe — Select all squares containing SIN. The squares you call sinful become the next round's squares.
• LOADING.exe — One progress bar. It lies. Cancel is the real protagonist.
• TASKMGR.exe — Souls are processes. So is every window you have open. So, at the bottom of the list, are you. End Task works on all of them.

the POPUPS

Closing a popup with the X spawns two more. This is not a bug, it is the business model. Some popups carry a small grey unsubscribe link that genuinely works . it might be hard to see, because that is also the business model.

The more you close things the wrong way, the faster they come, and the more the desktop itself sours behind them.

how to GET OUT OF HELL

Open taskmgr.exe. Scroll to the bottom of the process list.

You will know what to do.

how to FLOURISH IN HELL

use the mouse. it's a desktop, Silly. 

• Fullscreen: Alt + Enter / F11
• Close all windows: Ctrl + Shift + Delete

credits & licence

  all code, design, writing
  SVDE

  Default wallpaper ......... craftpix
  Baby devil art .................. rpd-51
  Misc Win/UI icons ........ Alex Meub, damp-squib, craftpix
  retro UI elements .......... o-h4des / BetaDv
  Fonts ................................... Zepto by Domenico Mazza, ThickThinPixel by Ajay Karat
  Cosmica cursor ............... toumeya

HELL.exe is built on GodotOS by popcar2, used and modified under the AGPL-3.0. The desktop, window manager, taskbar, file manager and context menus are all theirs — this jam entry is the programs, the popups and the mood. Go and look at GodotOS, it's a lovely piece of work, and consider buying popcar2 a coffee.

Because GodotOS is AGPL-3.0, hell.exe is AGPL-3.0 too, and its full source is available — see the source link on this page.

No generative AI was used for any asset in this project.

GodotOS is not affiliated with the Godot Engine developers or the Godot Foundation. Neither is Hell.