Toxicode

What is Toxicode?

Toxicode is a simulation game set in a flooded undercity where legitimate medicine has stopped showing up. The player runs an unlicensed clinic, and the clientele arrive carrying V-NEX, a pathogen that dissolves tissue and overrides installed cyberware. Not every visitor is infected, which is its own kind of problem when the waiting room is full and the clinic air is going bad.

The work is diagnosis on a budget. Visible signs hint at a strain, a manual narrows the possibilities, and the tests themselves cost the player something. Seven V-NEX strains circulate, and a run covers three shifts before the final patient turns out to be the doctor. Five endings exist, settled by that self-diagnosis, the spread of the outbreak and the player's Bio-Load. Sixty-six case notes wait to be earned along the way.

Mallen made the game for the Redot Halloween Jam 2026 in Redot Engine 26.3, and it runs in an HTML5 frame in the browser at no cost.

How to play

Each shift opens on the waiting room, and the choice of who comes in next belongs to the player. Anyone left sitting gets sicker, and the ones who never get seen walk out untreated, carrying whatever they brought with them.

Inside the exam, read the visible signs and open the manual to compare them against the strains. Some patients are simply not infected and only need to be sent home. Pick a tool, then click the patient to run it. Every test pushes Bio-Load higher and worsens the patient's condition, and once a patient is Critical, the next test kills them.

Then commit to a treatment. A correct call pays; a wrong one lets the strain hit back. Amputation adds a second decision, because the cut point matters: slice below the rot and it stays, cut higher than necessary and the patient pays less.

Housekeeping sits between the drama. Scrub the air and spray down the table between patients. Between shifts, pay rent and stock suppressants and scrubber filters. The night bulletin reports who was saved and who was lost, and every infected patient who leaves or dies feeds the outbreak, which in turn fouls the clinic air. Reach a Bio-Load of 100 and the doctor blacks out.

Controls

Toxicode takes mouse, keyboard or controller, and Settings → Keys and buttons rebinds any key or button. The mouse does the physical work: select a tool, then click the patient to run it, and choose a cut point during an amputation.

Keyboard and pad players move focus with Tab, the arrow keys, the D-pad or the left stick, confirm with Enter or A, and back out of a panel with Esc or B. A shift pauses on Space or Esc, or Start or B on a pad. M opens the manual, and the arrow keys also scroll the manual and the credits.

Tests sit on 1, 2 and 3, or LB, RB and Y. Treatments map to Q, W, E, R and T. Quarantine and asking the next question both run through the focused option, with Y and A. A suppressant is S or LT, and rebooting a locked terminal is B or RT.

An optional hold-to-treat setting replaces the treatment confirmation dialog with a 0.6-second press of the treatment button or its key.

Tips for your first run

The pressure in Toxicode comes from spending, not from speed: Bio-Load climbs with every test, and a patient's condition drops alongside it. Nothing in the exam is timed, so slow down and read before clicking. A run that treats fewer patients properly usually beats a run that tests everyone and blacks out halfway through the second shift.

• Open the manual before running anything: matching visible signs to the seven strains is cheaper than guessing with a tool.
• Run the one test that separates two candidate strains, then stop and treat rather than stacking a second test on a patient already sliding toward Critical.
• Send uninfected visitors home instead of testing them into a Critical state.
• On an amputation, cut only as high as the rot demands; going higher than needed shrinks the patient's payment.
• Scrub the air and spray the table between patients so a sick district does not keep poisoning the clinic.
• Hold a suppressant back for the moment Bio-Load is creeping toward the blackout at 100.

Content and replayability

A single run is built from three shifts and a final self-diagnosis, and the ending depends on more than the last call. Every strain the player lost a patient to may be present in the doctor's blood, so the treatment chosen for that last patient is informed by the mistakes made earlier in the run. The outbreak's reach and the doctor's Bio-Load feed into the same calculation, and five endings sit at the other end of it.

Replay value comes from the case work. Sixty-six case notes are earned for successes and failures alike, and Case Files on the title screen keeps them between visits to the page. Finishing a run unlocks Night Terror modifiers, which give a reason to return with a harder configuration.

The cast of problems is wider than the strain list suggests. Some patients arrive completely uninfected, and corporate patients may lie when questioned, so the questioning phase is a real part of the diagnosis rather than flavour text. With seven strains and a waiting room that punishes hesitation, the same three shifts rarely play out the same way twice.

Presentation and performance

The screen is deliberately unkind as the doctor's condition worsens. Flicker and distortion grow with Bio-Load, joined by screen shake, flashes and moving backgrounds. Settings → Screen effects turns them down or off at any point, and at 0% the screen holds entirely still. Nothing required for reading is hidden behind an effect, and nothing in the exam runs on a timer.

Information is carried in more than colour. The patient's condition, the waiting room tiles, the meters and a locked terminal each show a shape as well as a hue and a word, with a triangle marking a warning and an octagon marking danger. Terminal lines always spell out what happened in plain words, so a diagnosis never hinges on spotting a shade.

Settings → Text size scales the results terminal, manual, bulletin, hints, Case Files, case report and briefing to 100%, 125% or 150%, while the workstation's buttons and meters hold their size. Audio is human-made or licensed rather than generated, with a dark sci-fi music pack, Kenney interface and sci-fi sounds, and radio static, heartbeat, typing and stamp effects. The build runs on Redot Engine 26.3 in an HTML5 frame.

Who should play it

This is a game for players who like deduction with a cost attached: the pleasure is in narrowing seven strains down to one using limited evidence and then living with the call. Anyone who enjoys medical puzzles, triage decisions and the slow arithmetic of risk will find the three-shift structure easy to pick up in a browser tab.

The tone suits cyberpunk and Halloween horror tastes rather than comfort play. A pathogen that eats flesh and firmware, patients who deteriorate while waiting, and a clinic that can be poisoned by its own district give the game a grim, anxious texture, and the flicker and distortion that scale with Bio-Load can be dialled down or switched off entirely.

It is a poor fit for players who want twitch action, long campaigns or guaranteed good outcomes; patients can die, the wrong treatment rebounds on the doctor, and the doctor can black out at Bio-Load 100. It is a strong fit for anyone who wants a compact, replayable simulation with multiple endings and a case file to fill.