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For those who may not be familiar, Submachine is a series of online flash games created by developer and artist Mateusz Skutnik.
The games were originally released for free, with remastered versions eventually becoming available for purchase through Skutnik’s website, but even then an up-to-date version of each game remained freely playable on the same website.
This ended with the disabling of Flash Player on January 12, 2021, and the free games – which operated on that system – became unplayable, leaving no free path to playing the games.
Except... that isn’t quite true.
I’m here today with a brief walkthrough for how to acquire those lost, free versions of the Submachine games. This should work for both Mac and PC users, but I cannot guarantee that this will work for all systems equally well.
I don’t believe that this qualifies as piracy since the versions I’m offering help to access were made available by Skutnik himself before being rendered unusable by outside forces, but if you have any moral qualms with using this method, you are under no obligation to do so. Likewise, I do not believe that this violates AO3 content policies, but if you disagree you are free to dispute that by filing a report.
Part 1 (Parts 1 and 2 can be done in either order)-
-Enter the Wayback Machine at archive.org
-Type this URL - https://www.mateuszskutnik.com/submachine/ - into the search bar and select any date prior to January 12, 2021. I'd go for one of the January 2 snapshots, but you’ve got plenty of options to choose from.
-For each game, you’ll need to click on the individual page for that game, then scroll down and click through to a separate page for the free online version. Navigate to this page for each game you want/need, either one at a time or all in a row in separate tabs.
-Once you’re ready, you can begin downloading the games. Enter the page source screen, either by right-clicking the webpage and selecting ‘View Page Source’, or, if you’re on a Mac, by entering the scroll-down ‘View’ menu at the top of the screen, going into the ‘Developer’ menu, and selecting ‘View Source’.
-Either way, once you’ve done that, locate the .swf link. You can either do this by scrolling down manually or by using the Find tool (command-F) to search for “.swf”. Either click the link or copy-paste it into a new window and the file should download automatically. You’ll need to do this separately for each game, since they’ll each be a separate .swf file, but that’s all for part 1.
Part 2 (Parts 1 and 2 can be done in either order)-
-So, now that you have the games (assuming you did Part 1 first), how do you play them? Well, this part’s pretty simple.
-Navigate to this URL - https://www.adobe.com/support/flashplayer/debug_downloads.html - and download the relevant projector for your device.
-Extract as necessary.
Part 3-
-You should now be able to play standalone .swf files on your computer at will, without any need for a browser. On Windows machines you may need to open Flash Player first and then click and drag the .swf file into the window, but at least on Mac all you’ll need is to double-click the .swf file to open it. Have fun!
Optional Bonus Part (Macs Only)-
-A trick I found to bring flash games to full screen, so you’re not stuck with huge, empty black space and disproportionately small visuals. The ‘Macs Only’ part isn’t personal bias, I just have not been able to replicate this on a Windows machine.
-Open the game you want to enlarge.
-Open the scroll-down ‘View’ menu and click ‘Zoom In’ (command-plus).
-Click the green ‘Resize’ button at the upper left of the flash window.
-Reopen the scroll-down ‘View’ menu and click ‘Zoom Out’ (command-minus).
-Done! This can sometimes be done by just clicking ‘Zoom In’ after the resize, but there’s a risk that you’ll end up with a game window slightly bigger than your screen.