Are you brave enough to play a game about malware?

It’s impossible to wax nostalgic about malware. I’ve tried all week, but it just won’t work. Remember those pirated programs that piggybacked on dodgy installers or slid through dodgy .exe files? Over the past few days, I’ve tried to feel even a little melancholic affection for these things, despite the fact that they always slowed down PCs or installed their own sinister search bars in the browsers of elderly parents.

They trigger memoriesAt least. When I think about malware—which I’m sure is still alive and well and is probably seeping its way to me via the Internet as I type this—I’m transported back to the late 1990s. That’s when I first realized that my innocent-looking desktop was actually the open mouth of a horrible pipe—a pipe that could funnel my finances into someone else’s bank account.

So Malwarea new puzzle game from Odd Games, is no playful attempt at folklore. It may look nostalgic, with its Windows 95-era email box and its series of polite grey software wizards waiting to be navigated. Don’t be fooled. This is actually a clever twist on a horror game. It revolves around that most primal of horror threats: infection, and the innate fear of being compromised.

All this does not mean that Malware isn’t exactly great. The game starts with that friendly inbox, where you receive a series of emails from frustrated computer users all over the world. Regardless of their individual stories, these users are all trying to install the programs they want without any of the programs they don’t want tagging along. Defeated, they now need your help. Each new email is essentially a new mission, and the missions are variations on a theme. Click on the launcher you’ve received, puzzle your way through the various checkboxes and EULA agreements. Click install, and then see if you got away with it. How did you do? Did you get the files you wanted to download without anything else?

As with real malware, the variations you encounter in Malware are often downright maddening. Even early challenges are quick to abandon innocent checkboxes and fiddle with tricky checkbox placement, hiding something malicious by smuggling it into the middle of an innocent-sounding list. Later challenges include buttons with the wrong labels, confusing language, automatic downloads that need to be interrupted, checkboxes hidden in license agreements, and all sorts of opportunities to ponder what exactly is meant by the option to go for a “custom install”? If you’re looking for a game that turns the simplest loading bar into a real agent of terror, this is it.

It’s beautifully judged material, but I’ve slowly come to realize that Malware works so well as a game for the same reason that malware often works in the real world. These things succeed because they understand that, even before they try to trick me, I already feel a little powerless when I’m sitting before the dull authority of a computer window. This remains true even when I really think about it, the authority the window seems to have is not an authority I remember giving it.

This comes down to the realization that computers are complex and work in ways that are far beyond my comprehension. It means that when they stoop to my level to give me dialog boxes that I can at least read and parse, I am already at a disadvantage. I already feel like I am not in a position to question much. I have already lost.

Inevitably, the more I played Malwarethe more I started to worry that it might actually be malware. There’s the slowly unfolding plot, for example, which is as erratic and improbable as the text that often brings vivid life to phishing emails from those faraway princes who just need a little help shifting their fortunes. And then there’s the simple feeling of a great opportunity at play. How hard would it be for the designers to slip in a real dodgy installer alongside all the fake dodgy ones they’ve already created? Wouldn’t that be meta?

But honestly, I think this is just an ingenious game that gets its power from laying down the tiniest fictions with the finest brushes. If you MalwareYou sit behind a computer and play as someone who sits behind a computer. And then you try, as best you can, to protect that imaginary computer from harm. Good luck.

Malware was released on July 31 on Windows. The game was reviewed using a download code purchased by the author. Vox Media has affiliate partnerships. These do not influence editorial content, though Vox Media may earn commissions for products purchased via affiliate links. You can find additional information about Polygon’s ethics policy here.