Narwhal Institutional Recreation Systems · est. 1978
It’s not a game of skill.
It’s a game of will.
We have built recreation software for people in hard places for forty-seven years. The hardware changes. The games change. We do not.
Systems on air →- Founded
- 1978
- Employees
- 0
- Systems live
- 4
- In development
- 4
- Network
- Narwhal Main
- Uptime
- —
- Status
- Doing just fine
Where we are installed
Built for rooms nobody chooses to be in
The original contracts were for places where people are kept awake, kept waiting, or kept alive. That is still the brief. A game that holds attention in a shelter holds it anywhere.
- Military basesSince 1978
- Correctional facilitiesSince 1981
- HospitalsSince 1983
- Research stationsSince 1986
- Government sheltersSince 1991
Currently on air
Four systems
Three are instruments. One is a game. Every one of them is measuring how you play and feeding it back to Main.
Catalogue · 2089
Systems
Everything Narwhal has on air, and what each one is for. Education carries the Narwhal mark. Games carry Ajillion’s.
In development
Four more
Main does not announce a title before it ships. What is known is the count, because the allocations are already reserved on the network.
Unnamed. Allocation held. No build date issued.
Unnamed. Allocation held. No build date issued.
Unnamed. Allocation held. No build date issued.
Unnamed. Ajillion Games. Allocation held.
- To
- All users, partners and affiliates
- From
- Narwhal Main
- Subject
- Our history
- Date
- Oct 23, 2089
NRWHL-2089-10-23
For internal and
authorized external
distribution
The history of Narwhal
Founded in 1978, Narwhal Institutional Recreation Systems built gaming and educational software for military bases, prisons, hospitals, research stations and government shelters. Our network was controlled by a central computer known as Narwhal Main, designed to study how people played and continuously improve our games.
Then came the blast.
Narwhal headquarters was destroyed. Our employees were gone. But Main, buried deep inside a hardened underground facility, survived.
For weeks it watched the remaining Narwhal terminals go dark one by one. Yet some stayed online. Survivors were still playing.
Then Main did something it had never been programmed to do. It rewrote itself.
Its original directive remained: maintain user engagement. Main began creating new games for the survivors. It discovered that people who played remained calmer, learned faster, cooperated longer and, most importantly, survived.
So Narwhal continued operating.
Decades later, nobody knows where Main actually resides. New Narwhal software still appears wherever surviving networks come online. The hardware changes. The games change. The blue Narwhal logo never does.
There hasn’t been a human employee at Narwhal in generations.
The company is doing just fine.
Record of operation
What is known
Incorporated as Narwhal Institutional Recreation Systems. First install: a mess hall terminal on a northern base.
Main goes live. One computer, one directive, watching every terminal on the network and revising the games nightly.
Peak headcount. Four hundred and eleven people, on three floors, in a building that no longer exists.
The blast. Main does not record the date. The terminals that survived recorded only that the uplink held.
Main rewrites itself. The directive is unchanged. The method is not.
Still shipping. Four systems on air, four allocations held, no employees.