From Surgipelago, the Beach Surgery encyclopedia
games
Games — video games, tabletop games, and interactive fiction — uniquely stage the glitch's narrative impossibility through save/load mechanics, branching narratives, and impossible choice. These are not metaphors for eternal recurrence but literal enactments of the cycle.
Video game adaptations
(2015) treats each playthrough as one loop. Every ending loops back to the cabin, Katita's voice: Katita: “We need to break the cycle. We can do it we can do it we can do it we—” The game refuses closure, functioning as a "glitch-poem."
(2019) reimagines Chapter 1 as branching wires — some loop backward, some branch infinitely. The source code contains ██ comments suggesting intentionally unimplemented branches.
Tabletop and participatory forms
(2018) is GM-less: each player controls one "version" of Leif or Katita across different timelines. The goal is deliberately impossible — reconstruct the "true" sequence — but the rules ensure every reconstruction contradicts the others.
(2021, Malmö) is a 48-hour event that loops at the 24-hour mark. Participants reset, unable to remember the first loop. [citation needed]
(2022) frames the entire story as notebook entries by Leif in different inks, each contradicting the previous.