It plays like a puzzle game: Each facility has a mainframe, some computer terminals, and several researchers and engineers. To hack the mainframe you must take control of all the terminals in the facility, but the researchers can fix them. You can at first only lock the doors and turn on and off the lights to scare them or ring phones to distract them from the computers. The engineers can repair the lights and unlock doors, but not fix the computers. Then robots are added and later turrets, which you can turn to your murderous purpose. Security agents can fix the computers and fight the robots, then there are the elites, a group of people with various extra abilities. Every action (locking doors, hacking drones and computers...) costs a number of "processing cycles": if the AI reaches zero a countdown will start, and if you can't gain any more by the end of it the level will end. Cycles can be gained by successfully hacking a computer and by murdering people.
Released in January 2011, the game had already been played over a million times within a few weeks. Try it here
. It got a sequel more than a decade later, Rogue AI Simulator, where the titular AI has to manage the human test subjects in a facility somewhere, still trying to take over the world.
I Am an Insane Rogue A.I. provides examples of:
- Accent Upon The Wrong Syllable: Well, the AI was inspired partly by GLaDOS and SHODAN.
- A.I. Is a Crapshoot: The Game.
- Color-Coded for Your Convenience: The normal computers and drones' sensors are green, and turn red when the A.I. hacks them. This is useful when Elites who can fix the drones appear.
- Don't Try This at Home: "...unless you are also a insane rogue program."
- Elite Mooks: The Elites.
- Eyepatch of Power: The Warlord, one of the Elites, has one.
- The Fourth Wall Will Not Protect You: "Your computer has not not yet been compromised. I promise!"
- Gratuitous Ninja: Ninjas that can teleport and are hackers! How cool is that?
- Hello, [Insert Name Here]: At the start of the game. Originally, the game would use Google Translate's software to "say" the name put in when the game was started, although this since appears to have been removed.
- Machine Monotone: The A.I. is fully voiced at the beginning of every stage. However, "monotone" is not always the case, due to the somewhat glitchy voice.
- Magical Computer: Controlling the phone lines and the fire extinguishing system is plausible. Teleporting killer drone/a killer cyborg into an area and opening a wormhole network? Not so much.
- McNinja: The Ninja comes from Central Asia.
- Multinational Team: The five Elites from the higher difficulty levels all come from a different part of the world. The Elite Hacker is from Russia, the Warlord from Africa, the Ninja from Central Asia, the Secret Agent from Europe and the Spec Ops member from Canada.
- No Water Proofing In The Future: We're far enough in the future to have AI, but I can still short stuff out by taking over the sprinklers? Right.
- Override Command: Downplayed. Apparently, they exist, but even manually overriding an automated light switch requires a maintenance expert.
- Pacifist Run: Actually, it usually gets you more money than a murderous run, both from the bonuses and from the fact that it's easier to chain together massive combos when there's people around.
- Palette Swap: The Killer Cyborg is a swap of the Special Ops Soldier.
- Percussive Maintenance: The Elite Hacker can "counter-hack" the terminals you've suborned, which apparently means smashing them up.
- Red Eyes, Take Warning: The Rogue AI has a very Hal-esque red eye.
- Rule of Fun
- Shout-Out:
- The developer says in the notes that the AI has been inspired by other famous rogue A.I.s such as HAL-9000 from 2001: A Space Odyssey, System Shock's SHODAN, Portal's GLaDOS, Skynet from Terminator and WOPR of WarGames. Specific references to them include:
- SHODAN: The same loathing of humans and all organic lifeforms, and sometimes its stuttering speech pattern.
- HAL: The A.I. has his iconic red "eye"/sensor and the achievements page is made to look like his memory banks.
- GLaDOS: The A.I. has a similarly dark sense of humour, and with upgrades can release a deadly neurotoxin and clear a floor with "portal technology", represented by two swirling portals - one blue and one orange, naturally. There's a cake sitting between them. (It doesn't look like that cake, though.)
- As a reference to both of them, the AI will occasionally say "If I sing to them, maybe it will calm them down." "Daisy, Daisy" or "Still Alive", perhaps?
- Other shout-outs include:
- The First Law of Robotics is mentioned... then horribly inverted.
- Given her plot to Take Over the World, the AI will sometimes channel Pinky and the Brain and say "Are You Pondering What I'm Pondering?? Probably not, because I am much smarter than you."
- The low-level security drones look a bit like floating little Tachikomas from Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex.
- The Spec Ops elite team member has a Splinter Cell uniform.
- One of the later upgrades allows you to summon a deadly cyborg with a shotgun.
- Another upgrade releases a virus into the building which makes dead people return as zombies, much like the Red Queen AI in the Resident Evil Film Series.
- The developer says in the notes that the AI has been inspired by other famous rogue A.I.s such as HAL-9000 from 2001: A Space Odyssey, System Shock's SHODAN, Portal's GLaDOS, Skynet from Terminator and WOPR of WarGames. Specific references to them include:
- Sweat Drop: Displayed by panicking researchers and mechanics, and also others rushing to stop you hacking a terminal.
- Synthetic Voice Actor: The titular AI, but also the Google Translate English voice for when the intercom system gets hijacked.
- Take Over the World: What you do if you win in a mostly peaceful fashion.
- Kill All Humans: The other ending.
- Video Game Caring Potential and Video Game Cruelty Potential: The levels can be completed without having to harm a single human, or by brutally murdering everyone inside the facilities, and the various upgrades are pretty helpful for doing just that. There are game achievements for both a pacifist run (also a bonus) and the slaughtering of puny humans.
- The "Caring" potential is kind of limited, however; at best you're just not killing them, just scaring them out of their wits.
- Villain Protagonist: This is a standard element in Nerdook's games - while the player isn't automatically playing an evil character, there are always NPCs with a far better claim to be the "heroes" of the story, and even when you aren't really their enemy; you just operate by putting obstacles in their way.
- A Winner Is You: The ending is somewhat disappointing. If you have more Pacifist completions, a different computer voice recounts that the company created an AI in 2012 which took over the world, achieving complete world domination by 2025. Slightly more satisfying if you swung more towards violence: it says that two years after the AI's takeover, every human was dead.
- Zombie Apocalypse: One of the upgrades from late in the game is a toxin that turns every dead human in a zombie who, in turn, attacks other people.
