999,999 Wrong Buttons: a million buttons, one is right, and the building is humming
You are standing in a room where every wall is covered in buttons, and you have just pressed the fourteenth one in a row on the beat. The bass came in around ten. The drums arrived just now. Somewhere in this building of 420 rooms there is one button that ends the search, and the only way anyone will ever tell you where it is, is by getting slightly warmer as you walk.
Inhaltsangabe
One right button. Nine hundred and ninety-nine thousand, nine hundred and ninety-nine wrong ones.
No map marker, no quest log
Nothing labels the right button. There is no arrow, no list of cleared objectives, no interface telling you that you are 4 percent of the way there. There is a building, there are buttons on every surface of it, and there is sound. What the game gives you instead of instructions is a score that warms as you get closer to the one that matters, and that is genuinely all the help you get unless you ask for more before you start.
Every press is a note
Press a button and it plays. Press several in time and the room starts building something underneath you: bass first, then drums, then pads, then a lead line, arriving as your combo passes ten, twenty-five, fifty, a hundred. Miss the beat and it comes apart again. The wall material changes the timbre, so a chapel and a boiler deck do not sound remotely alike, and the tempo is set per wing.
Buildings that are actually different
Twelve wings, each with its own palette, textures, tempo and ambient bed: Archive, Boiler Deck, Chapel, Server Farm, Nursery, Atrium, Showroom, Laundry, Observatory, Arcade, Greenhouse, Vault. Thirteen buildings to search, a different one each game unless you pick.
Ten seconds to understand and considerably longer to finish.
999,999 WRONG BUTTONS
A million buttons in a building of 420 rooms. One of them is right. Every press is a note, and the music gets warmer the closer you get.
The rooms have their own ideas
A button under glass
Some rooms have plinths, and on one of them sits a button inside a glass case. You cannot press it. Somewhere in the same room there is a hammer lying on the floor, and if you pick it up and swing at the case the glass shatters and falls, and then the button is yours. It clears a room somewhere else in the wing when you hit it, and it never touches the room holding the one you are looking for.
Rooms that misbehave
A rotunda with a DJ booth in the middle whose decks, mixer and pads you can actually play. A dark room where the buttons are invisible until the moment you press them. A mirror room with real reflections, which is where you find out what your character looks like. A crypt. A graffiti room with spray cans on the floor, ten tags per can, and bare walls to use them on. An arcade with a slot machine that will occasionally press sixty buttons on your behalf, and clear the entire room on a jackpot.
Half the lights are off
Roughly half the rooms start dark, lit only by the LED strip running along the skirting, which fades up as the ceiling lights go down. There is a switch beside every door with a glowing ring around it, and finding it is the first thing you do in a black room. There are rats in the mouseholes and a trap that pays out when it snaps.
Five hundred event buttons are scattered through each building, and nineteen different things they can do to you.
999,999 WRONG BUTTONS
A million buttons in a building of 420 rooms. One of them is right. Every press is a note, and the music gets warmer the closer you get.
What you get for pressing the strange ones
Wide Press and Sticky Beat
Gems sit on some plinths and drop out of the rat trap. Wide Press makes every press hit a three by three patch for a minute, which is the difference between clearing a wall and staring at it. Sticky Beat forgives your next broken combo, and you can hold up to three. Neither is currency and neither is bought; you find them.
Buttons that do things to the room
Among the ordinary ones are buttons that flip gravity, kill the lights, throw confetti, start a light show, play elevator music, slow everything down, swap your controls, make your head enormous, open a closet that should not be there, or whisper your name. Nineteen kinds in total, five hundred of them per building, and none of them announced in advance.
A museum for the odd ones
Anything strange you find goes into the Button Museum, which is a room you can walk back into and look at. There are awards for clearing a room, clearing an entire wing, curating the museum, finding the duck, and two more that are better left unexplained.
Nothing here is a purchase, a timer or a currency. It is all in the building, waiting to be walked into.
999,999 WRONG BUTTONS
A million buttons in a building of 420 rooms. One of them is right. Every press is a note, and the music gets warmer the closer you get.
The bottom line: one more room
999,999 Wrong Buttons is a first person search through a building that answers you in music. A million buttons across 420 rooms and twelve wings, one of which is right, and a score that warms as you close in on it. It plays in the browser with no download, no account and no server, and everything, your progress, your settings, your museum, stays on your own machine. A Windows build is available if you would rather have it on the desktop. Headphones are strongly recommended, because the entire game is built around what you hear, and the hint you need is in the mix. Multiplayer is the next thing on the workbench: the building is meant to be searched with other people, with shared sessions joined by a link, rooms that stay cleared for everyone and the sound of somebody else working a corridor away. Go and press something wrong.
Do I have to press a million buttons to finish?
No. The building tells you where to look. The music warms as you approach the right button, so the game is about narrowing down a wing, then a room, then a wall, rather than exhausting them. Sweeping lets you press a whole run of buttons in one drag, the slot machine will press sixty for you on a good spin and clear an entire room on a jackpot, and the button under the glass case clears another room somewhere in the wing. The search is the game; the count is the joke.
Do I need headphones?
Strongly recommended. The only hint the game gives you by default is the score getting warmer as you get closer, and the combo layers, the wing's ambient bed and the material of each wall are all carrying information. It is playable on speakers, and there are volume, music and mono options, plus other hint levels you can switch on before you start if you would rather have more help.
Is there multiplayer?
Not yet. This release is single player. Co-op and race modes are planned, with shared sessions you join by link, rooms that stay cleared for everyone in the session, and hearing where the others are working. It is the next major thing on the list.
Does it save, and does it need an account?
It saves, and there is no account. There is no sign-in, no server and no data leaving your machine: your progress, settings, awards and Button Museum are stored locally in the browser or in the desktop build. Close it and come back whenever you like.
What do I need to run it?
A browser with WebGL 2, which covers anything reasonably current. There is a quality preset, a bloom toggle and a reduced motion option for slower machines, and the game will tell you plainly if your graphics card cannot start it rather than sitting on a loading screen. A Windows download is available if you would rather not play in a tab.
How long does it take?
As long as you want it to. A building is 420 rooms and you are looking for one button, but the warmth in the music means a determined search is a matter of an evening rather than a lifetime. There are thirteen buildings, each with its own secret in a different place, so finishing one does not finish the game.