A satirical first-person shooter with no gore, about escaping a San Francisco that an AI company has quietly bought. It has eleven voiced levels, four difficulty settings and seven foam-and-hype weapons, plus a rope ladder that will not wait for you. Codename YNGM.
Download the latest release for Windows 10/11, Linux x86_64 or macOS 11+. Free, offline, no account.
The game is free and stays free whether or not you donate. If you play it, like it, or just want to support the cause, please give to my fundraiser for the National Breast Cancer Foundation:
Donations go straight to NBCF, which issues the receipts. Gifts of $2 or more are tax-deductible in Australia. I never hold the money, and donating doesn't unlock anything in the game.
Proud Community Supporter of the National Breast Cancer Foundation. This game is my own project. It is not run, produced or endorsed by NBCF.
Preston Exitwell, founder and CEO of Overclass, has announced "the transition". His flagship model, OMEGA, now does everyone's job, and the city has split into two groups: people with a seat on the helicopter, and the permanent underclass.
You fight your way up a Hypersynergy Labs tower and grab the ladder off the roof, expecting a rescue. Instead you wake up in the Overclass Opportunity Center, labelling OMEGA's training data eighteen hours a day, paid in exposure. Then Dana Kestrel, Overclass's fired head of alignment, gets in your ear and gets you out.
From there you run the frozen 101 and raid Down Round Capital on Sand Hill Road for Lance Upround's campus keys. You survive a hackathon that wants you caught, wreck the Overclass campus and the GPU cold aisles where OMEGA trains, and push through a container yard at Pier 70. The last stop is the Ark: Exitwell's offshore launch platform, where the board is about to leave for orbit with OMEGA's weights. Beat the board, then beat Exitwell's exosuit, and you get to write OMEGA's new objective.
Nobody dies. The enemies are VCs throwing term sheets, AI founders pitching at you, security bots, shift managers and thought leaders. Beat them and they leave.
| # | Level | What you do |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | South of Market | Fight up the tower and reach the roof ladder before the helicopter leaves |
| 2 | The Opportunity Center | Smash three shift-quota terminals and break out through the loading dock |
| 3 | The 101 | Cross the gridlock and catch the last train south |
| 4 | Sand Hill Road | Take the campus keys from Lance Upround |
| 5 | Disrupt-a-thon | Survive the hackathon while Dana cracks the doors |
| 6 | Overclass Campus | Knock out OMEGA's four power relays |
| 7 | Cold Aisle | Destroy three cooling cores and take the freight lift |
| 8 | Pier 70 | Make the boat before it leaves |
| 9 | The Ark | Hold launch control, then reach the tower elevator |
| 10 | The Boardroom | Beat three board directors and their security |
| 11 | OMEGA | Bring down Exitwell's exosuit and rewrite OMEGA |
- Seven weapons, unlocked through the story: the Foam Dart Blaster, Confetti Cannon, Slop Grenade, NDA Stapler (stuns), Hype Railgun (goes through a whole line), Valuation Bubble (area pop) and Disruptor (chains between targets).
- Four difficulties: Easy - Trust Fund, Normal - Series A, Hard - Bootstrapped, Nightmare - Permanent Underclass.
- Objectives: timed escapes, destructible targets, survival waves and boss fights.
- Graphics presets (Auto, Low, Medium, High) and a frame counter. It runs on Intel UHD-class laptops, and frame rate is not capped beyond vsync on faster PCs.
- Cover-art loading screen with a progress bar and scrolling tips. Progress, difficulty and settings save automatically, and Level Select replays any level you have reached.
Each download is self-contained: no Godot, Python, account or internet connection needed. You need a keyboard, a mouse and OpenGL 3.3-class graphics.
- Download
YNGM-1.0.2-Windows-x64-Setup.exefrom Releases. - Run it. The installer is not code-signed, so SmartScreen may warn you: choose More info > Run anyway.
- It installs for your user only (no admin prompt) to
%LOCALAPPDATA%\Programs\YNGMand adds a Start-menu shortcut, plus a desktop shortcut if you tick it.
To uninstall, use Windows Installed apps or Uninstall.exe in the game folder. Silent install: YNGM-1.0.2-Windows-x64-Setup.exe /S.
tar -xzf YNGM-1.0.2-Linux-x86_64.tar.gz
cd YNGM
./install.sh # copies to ~/.local/share/yngm and adds a menu entryTo run without installing, use ./YNGM.x86_64. To uninstall, run ~/.local/share/yngm/install.sh --uninstall.
- Unzip
YNGM-1.0.2-macOS-universal.zipand drag the app into Applications. - The app is ad-hoc signed but not notarised, so the first time you open it, right-click it and choose Open, then Open again.
Each package README ends with a request you can paste into Claude Code or Codex, opened in your download folder:
Install "Escape from the Permanent Underclass" from the download in this folder. Read the README in the download and follow its steps exactly. Do not change anything else on my computer, and tell me what you did.
Each release's Linux and macOS packages are installed and launched on clean GitHub runners (Ubuntu 24.04, and macOS 15 on Apple Silicon and Intel). They have not been played on a physical Linux PC or Mac.
| Action | Key |
|---|---|
| Move / look | WASD / mouse |
| Sprint / jump | Shift / Space |
| Fire | Left mouse button |
| Switch weapon | 1-7 or mouse wheel |
| Restart level | R |
| Release the mouse | Esc |
| Skip story scenes | Enter |
Green BRIDGE ROUND crates restore your runway (health).
The game is a Godot 4.7.2 project (the standard build,
not .NET) in game/. To play from source, open game/project.godot in the editor, or run godot --path game.
To build all three packages on Windows:
- Put the Godot 4.7.2 Windows console editor and its export templates in
tools/godot/, and NSIS 3.13 intools/nsis/nsis-3.13/. Both folders are git-ignored; see the packaging guide. python -m pip install -r tools/packaging/requirements.txtpython tools/packaging/build-yngm.py
The packages land in dist/, with sizes and SHA-256 hashes in dist/build-result.json.
Voice clips are pre-generated and committed. tools/generate_voice.py regenerates missing ones with Piper
(pinned in tools/tts/requirements.lock.txt).
godot --headless --path game --script res://tests/test_level.gd # gameplay, menus, weapons, loading screen
godot --headless --path game --script res://tests/test_levels.gd -- --levels=1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11 # every level has floors, navigation and a walkable route to each objective
python -m pytest tools/packaging # installer artworkGitHub Actions runs all three on every push and pull request, using the official
Godot 4.7.2 Linux build with its checksum verified. Every published release is also downloaded and installed on clean
GitHub runners (release install check). On Ubuntu 24.04 it checks the hash,
runs install.sh, launches the game headless and in a window with a screenshot, and uninstalls. On macOS 15, on both
Apple Silicon and Intel, it installs to Applications, verifies the signature and architectures, launches the app
headless and through open, and removes it. game/tests/autoplay/ also contains a frame-rate benchmark and
a bot that plays the whole campaign.
| Path | Contents |
|---|---|
game/ |
Godot project: scripts, levels, story (data/story/), assets, tests, licence texts |
installer/ |
NSIS installer script and packaging notes |
tools/packaging/ |
Build script for the Windows installer and the Linux and macOS packages |
tools/ |
Voice, sound-effect, texture and recording helpers |
recordings/ |
Benchmark and playthrough results |
Everything here is fictional satire: no real company, product or person is depicted, and none is affiliated with the game. Everything is free and open source. The original code and content, including every voice clip, are MIT licensed. Third-party assets and tools (Godot, Kenney, Quaternius, Poly Haven, Poly Pizza, NSIS) keep their own open licences, mostly CC0 or MIT.
LEGAL.md has the full list of tools and assets, licences, voice provenance, AI-assistance disclosure, trademark notes and privacy statement.