Submachine 4: The Lab

The Submachine series consists of ten games which develop the main storyline and four spin-offs. In the games the player explores a mysterious world full of collapsed structures and strange devices and has to find a way further or out. In Submachine 4: The Lab the player, as promised in the ending of Submachine 3: The Loop, starts the game at the eponymous Lab, which was created for exploring the submachine network - more precisely, on the roof of the building. As in all games from the series, there's no one inside, but the player, through finding and reading notes left by previous exploration teams, has to understand the game's goal, explore different locations and solve puzzles which his or her predecessors have failed to solve.

At this point the whole Submachine series started growing into much larger games than before. While the second and third game were already clearly bigger than the very short first one, the plot of both of them was limited to a single large location. In Submachine 4, for the first time, the player has an opportunity to explore different places. Some variations on places from previous games are revisited, including an ancient section inspired by the first spin-off game in the series, Submachine Zero.

The 2007 browser version of the game is free. The 2014 HD version for PC is a commercial release.