This is Bad Machine, a piece of interactive fiction. If you have never played a piece of interactive fiction before, here are some instructions. These are for IF in general, but the gist is correct for this specific piece.

The game is playing on this page in an applet (so you may need to click on the game window before entering your commands). If you'd rather play it locally on your computer, you can download the platform-independent gamefile and an interpreter for your platform (Windows, MacOS, Linux, or something else). The advantage of downloading is a somewhat faster response time, cleaner UI, and being able to save your game and resume it later, but it is also perfectly playable as an applet on this page.

 

 

 

Bad Machine written by Dan Shiovitz and running with Jetty.