MARINE LIFE RESEARCH INSTITUTE — STATION STATUS: ABANDONED
An Experimental Cognitive Host Organism
ECHO. That is what they called it. You are Lymph — a parasite built in a laboratory that no longer exists. The tank is broken. The corridors are flooded. Find a body, and get out.
Transmission 01
Recovered transmission
SIGNAL DEGRADED. TWO FURTHER TRANSMISSIONS RECOVERED — SEE FIELD RECORDINGS.
Incident report
The ocean didn't kill this place.
M.L.R.I. — the Marine Life Research Institute — studied deep-sea life. On paper. Below the public floors, its scientists built two biological weapons: Specimen Alpha and Lymph. Organisms designed to take other bodies as their own.
They implanted fragments of human memory into both, hoping to grow empathy. In Alpha the memories twisted instead — the creature broke containment, tore through the lower decks and killed its makers. The facility went silent.
Lymph slept through all of it in a failing BioTank. Years later, the glass gave way. Now something small and blue drifts through the ruin, wearing borrowed bodies and listening to the recordings a dead man left behind.
FILE // PROJECT ECHO
EngineUnreal Engine 5
Format~45 min vertical slice
GenreStealth · puzzle · exploration
PlatformPC (Windows)
TeamVŠMU students
StatusIn development
Specimen dossiers
Every body is a tool. None of them last.
Hold a host and its abilities are yours — for a while. Blue corruption spreads across its body as the connection decays. When it fails, Lymph is ejected: slow, soft and defenseless until it finds the next one.
HOST-01 // FLOOR C
Crab
Heavy chassis
Strong claws press buttons, carry key items and hold doors open. Its shell shrugs off turret fire.
WeaknessSlow.
HOST-03 // FLOOR B
Piranha
Cutting tool
Bites clean through cables — defense systems die with their wiring. The fastest body in the facility.
WeaknessBurns out fast.
HOST-02 // FLOOR B
Electric eel
Living battery
Immune to the electric barriers that seal the lower decks. Charges itself on live current and wakes dead generators.
WeaknessNo bite. No armor.
HOST-04 // FLOOR A
Shark
Breach unit
Mass and momentum. Breaks the walls the facility sealed shut. Two are still alive down there — one of them has no pigment at all.
WeaknessToo big for the corridors.
Host decay
Possession is not free. Each host decays on its own clock — the edges of the screen darken, the body slows, blue corruption spreads until the connection snaps. Plan the route. Know where the next body is waiting.
Containment notice
Specimen Alpha is still in the building.
The first weapon never left. It took a body near the reception hall and never let go; the host has long since deformed into something the ocean has no name for. It cannot be possessed. It cannot be killed. Stay out of its light — and make it break the glass for you.
Discoveries
Facility archive terminal
M.L.R.I. ARCHIVE // TERMINAL 07
SPECIMEN 01 — RECORDED
Crab
Pressure plates, cargo, doors.
SPECIMEN 02 — RECORDED
Electric eel
Barriers, generators.
SPECIMEN 03 — RECORDED
Piranha
Cables, traps.
SPECIMEN 04 — RECORDED
Shark
Walls. The way out.
SPECIMEN 05
Specimen unknown
Not yet possessed.
SPECIMEN 06
Specimen unknown
Not yet possessed.
LOG_01
FLOOR C — PARASITE CHAMBER"Chamber C. The subject responded to stimulus before the sequence finished compiling. It learns faster than we projected."
RECOVERED
LOG_02
FLOOR C — CRAB LAB"The board wants a weapon. I wanted to understand cognition. We keep telling ourselves these are the same project."
RECOVERED
LOG_03
FLOOR B — PIRANHA LAB"Memory implantation approved for both specimens. Human fragments; donor records sealed. If it can remember, it can obey."
RECOVERED
LOG_04
FLOOR B — OBSERVATION"Alpha dreamed last night. There is no other word for it. Lymph only watches me now, through the glass."
RECOVERED
LOG_05
FLOOR B — EEL WING"[…] the screaming in the eel wing was not the eels. Requested a containment review. Request denied."
CORRUPTED
LOG_06
FLOOR A — SHARK TANK GANTRY"Alpha remembers a house. A family. None of it is its own. It is angry in a way an animal cannot be."
RECOVERED
LOG_07
FLOOR A — RECEPTION"If anyone finds this — the tanks fail without maintenance. Whatever is still alive down here, we made it. It didn't ask to—"
SIGNAL LOST
Transmissions 02–03
Field recordings
TRANSMISSION 02 // RAW FEED
FULL WALKTHROUGH — NO COMMENTARY
TRANSMISSION 03 // ANNOTATED
PLAYTHROUGH — DEVELOPER COMMENTARY
Recovered footage
Screenshots
Awaiting decryption
Awaiting decryption
Awaiting decryption