CROSSWIRED — Night Shift at Panel 7

Genre & setting: incremental diagnostics puzzle, 70s retro-tech

Night shift at an unnamed computing center. The machine in front of you isn't behaving the way the labels say it should — something has crossed the wiring between the switches, dials, and indicators.

In DIAGNOSTIC mode, time is frozen: flip the controls, watch what reacts, and map out the real wiring. In PRODUCTION mode, jobs come in — bring the indicators into the target state and hold it until it locks in. Completed jobs earn you cycles, which you can spend on repairing faults or probing a control to reveal its true wiring.

Each shift introduces new kinds of faults: crossed wiring, inversions, interlocks, and delays turn a simple panel into a puzzle you have to solve all over again.