Extinction Simulator
written by: Nathaniel Hort-Ly
Extinction Simulator, a small 32-bit multiplayer roller coaster shooter, its visuals made to blend like an old CRT display. Simply join the queue and get on a train. When your group departs, you take a smooth, jaunty train ride across the Great Plains. From your window, there’s nothing but flat grass as far as you can see, and black ocean-like masses of bison in the distance. Shoot them, and win cash and gear for your next trip across the plains.
For a shooter, it’s pretty easy. On your first run through it feels like a clicker game, the plains wash over in black and you click your mouse as fast as the starter gun allows. A wave comes and you spam click, another wave comes and you spam click, another wave comes and you click again. A rhythm comes about, matching your pace to the gun and the waves. You reach the end, and your score comes up, a count of bison shot.
It took a while before you noticed the counter at the top corner of the screen. It only ever went down. You join the community, people talk about the game, and the counter, and what would happen when it reached the end. Someone on Reddit finally connected the end-of-round score to a server-wide drop in count.
And so more people came along, the trains got more packed. People shot more bison, got bigger guns, shot more bison, got cooler gear, shot more bison, got faster guns, shot more bison. The rides are now parties, you’re in proxy chat full of people speculating, excited, you’re in message boards full of people speculating, excited, you’re shooting the bison. YouTubers made theories, gameplay, and brought new people to the game, to drop the count.
Someone tweeted that the last person to shoot a bison would win a cash prize. A fake screenshot from the producers went around, and spread – viral. And the number got lower, you got better, the number got lower, you got giddy, the number got lower. And someone noticed the herds were no longer solid black waves on the plains, there were gaps, the color a bit fuzzier, the green showing through in the scanlines. And the players worked to drop the count.
The plains’ edge turned red one day, as the number ticked down from 100,000 to 99,999. A bit of red on your journey, blended in the back of the horizon, with the setting sun. You could see the sun now, and forums started talking again. There were less bison, less black, more green, and red. The game was harder now, a bit more fun, and those who stayed had gotten better, with their better guns, and better gear. The sun was setting, the day was passing, the count was dropping.
Click. Zero. 0. Then it ticked over to zero, and the game kept running. When it happened, the community expected a patch note, or a server wide alert. None ever came. People went to Reddit, and YouTube, and saw the last bison shot. And the trains kept running across the plains. You left the game after that, there wasn’t anything left to do. Players said the trains still ran, the game still ran, the servers still ran, the world still ran. But the bison were gone, and there was nothing to shoot. The bison were gone, and there was nothing to count down.
The train went and the plains were green
And red
And white.
And the sky, blue.
- Extinction Simulator - March 23, 2026
