HALLOW OS: an operating system

HALLOW OS: an operating system that will not let you shut it down 👻

Log in to a haunted desktop where everything is alive. The candles in the dock burn, zombies stagger across the hill (click them), the cauldron brews in real 3D, and the tombstone clock leaks green mist. Then click Shut Down, and the ghost who lives in the machine comes out and refuses. Fight it to win the night. Shut down again and it finally lets go: its breath blows the candles out one by one and the moon irises out to Goodnight.

How it's built

• Rive CLI: the whole file is RML written with my coding agent (desktop, 9 app windows, login, the ghost), then verified, published and pushed from the terminal

• GPU Canvas: 11 WGSL shaders. 2D lighting with a lights-out lantern, a raymarched 3D cauldron with live liquid, glass jars that refract the shelf, candle and pumpkin fire, tombstone mist, a round moon with craters, a login ghost made of light that watches your cursor, and the possession and iris-out ending

• Scripting: a Luau host runs every GPU pass and plays 59 sounds

• State machines and data binding drive the windows, the fight, the night and the ending

• Human touch: the art, icons, ghost and cursor are mine, and every look went through rounds of review and redrawing by hand

Play it at https://halloweenos.heisenbergg.com