The idea is that the player has somehow wound up in a server-based virtual reality known as the Soul Cloud, a gigantic bank of servers run by the Mysteri Group for the purpose of preserving the memories of consumers in the form of explorable virtual environments for other consumers, relatives included, to visit. The player has to work their way through various memories to find out why they ended up in the Soul Cloud, and gather exposition on the memories and world they are in by finding data files in the form of rubber ducks, all the while being stalked by the Soul Cloud's antivirus software, embodied as a strange little girl with glowing eyes.
Master Reboot contains examples of:
- Advancing Wall of Doom: After the player has finished watching the introductory video on the Soul Cloud, one of these appears as a quarantine procedure when the player attempts to leave.
- Breaking the Fourth Wall: Getting the alternative ending involves this. When you are being asked to do a Master Reboot and the system is asking you Do you want to continue?, pause the game. Have you noticed something different in the pause menu?
- Colour-Coded for Your Convenience: The different cubes have different functions denoted by colour. Blue teleports the player to another part of the memory, green returns the player to the Hub Level, white is the pure memory that the player has to retrieve before being led to the memory's exit, and red allows the player to interact with the memory in some way.
- Creepy Child: seren.exe, the Soul Cloud's security program. Even the infomercial that introduces the player to the setting portrays her with unnervingly-thin eyes.
- Downer Ending: The game has two possible endings, one of them being this. The other one is also this. Depending on your views, the normal ending might be more of a Bittersweet Ending as Madison might find David, even though she's dead.
- Escape Sequence: One of the earlier memories ends with the player being chased by a giant demonic teddy bear, while occasionally being blocked by force fields that can only be turned off by clicking swarms of cryptic error messages.
- Glowing Eyes of Doom: seren.exe's eyes.
- Hub Level: The player eventually gains access to one of these, after having been introduced to what the Soul Cloud actually is.
- Jump Scare: seren.exe has a bit of a habit of bursting out of closets to throttle the player.
- After the lights go out after the initial exposition dump infomercial, the player starts to proceed down a newly-opened corridor, before being startled by a sudden, "INTRUSION DETECTED. INITIATING QUARANTINE."
- The scream that the player hears whenever they examine the purple glyphs throughout the game can qualify for this when one isn't expecting them, even if they are rather quiet.
- Meaningful Name:
- The Mysteri Group takes its name from Mister David Ree.
- Kali, the Goddess of Destruction.
- Laser-Guided Amnesia / I Am Who?: You play a character that suffers an accident while being uploaded to the Soul Cloud, with no hints of who you are. Most of the game is about recovering these memories. Turns out you're Madison, the CEO and main programmer of Mysteri and you plugged in to fix the Soul Cloud. The virus caused the accident and broken memories. And now you have very little time to fix it.
- The Metaverse: The various memories in the Soul Cloud are like private versions of this.
- The Nothing After Death: The reason Madison develops the Soul Cloud.
- Plot-Triggering Death: Astrid's loss in the Soul Cloud crash.
- Scenery Porn: The biggest reason why the game was made. The first area the player is dropped into in particular, with its fantastic sunbeam effects.
- Story Breadcrumbs: The blue ducks.
- Title Drop: The virus can be fixed by doing a Master Reboot.
- Tron Lines: These show up on a lot of objects, but one bizarre place they show up in is in a forest area, where they occasionally appear on an axe and some destroyable tree trunks.
