OBEX 2025

Conor Marsh leads a quiet life in Baltimore in 1987, with his dog Sandy, a routine that feels almost too calm to be real. One day, while thumbing through a computer magazine, he spots an advertisement for a video game called OBEX, built around a demon named Ixaroth who devours human souls. Intrigued, he orders the game and begins to play, only to find the gameplay disappointingly simple and underwhelming compared to the hype on the page. That night, a whir of his printer interrupts his sleep, and a cryptic note emerges, claiming that something is inside his VHS tape collection. He searches, but the figure remains elusive, and he drifts back into sleep. In the darkness, the demon Ixaroth slips out of the television and abducts Sandy, vanishing into the world of his own making.

The next morning brings a shock: Sandy is missing, and Conor, outside in the dim light, discovers a Macintosh computer glowing with unfamiliar energy. He is suddenly pulled into the world of OBEX, where the boundaries between game and reality blur. In a strange, otherworldly shop, a woman running the establishment provides him with tools and supplies for the quest ahead. As he pushes forward, he rescues a television head named Victor from cicada-like figures, and Victor decides to join him on the perilous journey.

Together they traverse a landscape lit by neon and night, eventually locating a car and driving through a long, tense night toward the symbolic Valley of Bones. Along the way, Conor is ambushed by two naked humans who quickly transform into skeletal forms, a terrifying reminder of the world’s warped logic. Victor carries the wounded Conor to a safe haven, where they are revived and prepared to continue the mission.

Their path then leads them to the looming castle of Ixaroth, a fortress whose gates are stubbornly sealed. The pair rests to regroup, but the morning reveals a grim turn: the skeletal remains of Victor lie nearby, a sacrificial act that unlocked the gates at last. Undeterred, Conor presses inside and finds himself in a church filled with cicada-like figures. There, he locates Sandy imprisoned within a television set, but the moment of rescue is crushed when Sandy dies just as he is about to free him. In the midst of this sorrow, Conor encounters his mother, who unveils a memory book packed with images from his past, then vanishes as if pulled away by a stronger force.

Ixaroth confronts Conor in this church labyrinth, and a fierce battle erupts. Armed with a sword, Conor defeats the demon and experiences a brief, hard-won reconciliation with Sandy. Yet the most shifting truth arrives in the final flash: the entire journey has been a game—an elaborate loop that Conor has been playing, altering the fabric of his life in the real world. When he returns to reality, he and Sandy sit together on a tranquil beach, the veil between game and life finally settled, and the quiet rhythm of normalcy returning to their days.