Project P.I.T.T. Playthrough: From Dropping Ducks into a Pit to Automating an Alchemy Cauldron

The protagonist arrives at the workplace as an intern. The assigned job is a simple one: make rubber ducks and put them in the pit. Work begins once the lights come on. There's no boss to act as a mentor, and apparently the protagonist's work is being watched through security cameras.

The workplace has a machine that looks like it upgrades your abilities if you put money in, and a machine that produces ducks when you turn its handle. The commentator jokes that the ducks that come out are modeled "about as precisely as Cloud in FF7." Having been told the job is "feeding the hungry giant pit," the commentator tosses a duck into the pit and gets $1. When the protagonist tries jumping into the pit, no money is awarded; in fact, the protagonist's money goes down.

Not feeling like working seriously, the commentator looks around the factory and finds a suspicious box. According to the commentator, it has a name that's "obviously good for your brain," and opening it releases a large number of ducks. Since two ducks falling in a row earn $3, the commentator figures out that dropping them consecutively gives a bonus. So the ducks are gathered near the pit and dropped in all at once, earning over $100.

With the saved-up money, the commentator uses the upgrade terminal, choosing actions like dash, jump, crouch, and throw, as well as tool and crafting upgrades. Turning around, the commentator finds that the $5 item that was ordered has been left at the door. It's a sturdy tool for how cheap it is, and the commentator holds it overhead and goes around smashing every security camera in the facility in the name of "improving the work environment."

After that, the commentator heads up to the previously off-limits second floor. A little trick is also shown: if you jump on a box while picking it up, you can float surprisingly well. Gathering the boxes lying around upstairs and shaking them open inside the pit, ducks come gushing out. The commentator puts a box over the top as a lid to keep the ducks from spilling out of the pit. For the second upgrade, the commentator chooses a broom, faster crafting, longer combo time, and a bonus amplification effect.

From here, the real work begins. The commentator cranks the duck machine and sweeps the ducks toward the pit with the broom. The broom makes it possible to move large numbers of ducks at once. When they're dropped over the edge of the pit, the ducks pour in like a fluid, and the combo bonus sends earnings soaring. The commentator calls this "one of the best moments in this game." This one round earns a total of about $2,600.

With that money, the commentator orders a fan that blows ducks automatically and a large number of panels that can be placed freely on the floor. Lining up about 10 panels near the giant pit to form a large backstop, and adjusting the angle of a fan placed in front of the duck machine, gets the ducks going into the pit automatically. Since it can be left idle just by keeping the cursor over the machine, the commentator decides to wait for quitting time "by bashing the PC or grinding through some gacha game dailies."

The newly unlocked bumpers are also tried out. Hitting a duck with one increases its value, so they're placed in the pit in hopes that the ducks will hit them on their own. Income per duck, which was $4 before, rises to $6–7 afterward, and the commentator's money tops $10,000.

An alarm goes off and the scenario moves to the next stage. Opening a newly added box releases a flood of cash registers instead of ducks. The registers are high value, at $100 each. Holding them in with bumpers while putting them into the pit, the combo bonus for 48 registers is tallied, and the commentator's money goes from $16,000 to $89,000. The commentator uses that money to open more boxes, grows it to several hundred thousand dollars, and then moves on to building facilities.

Phase 2 unlocks a cash register maker, so the commentator builds a line to carry the registers. Unlike ducks, registers are heavy, so cushion panels are placed at the landing spot first to keep them from getting damaged on impact. To carry the caught registers to the pit, slick panels with slippery surfaces are lined up. The 42 slick panels used cost $84,000, but the commentator says that's not much after making money off the boxes. Finally, industrial fans are placed, completing a line where registers stopped by the cushions are pushed by the wind and slide all the way to the pit. The commentator names moments like this, when everything comes together, as one of the fun parts of automation games. After taking a break and coming back, the commentator has several million dollars.

Something strange happens again. The commentator guesses this means the Phase 2 quota is complete. Buying the new items "Decorative Pin Arrangement" and "Piston" makes a bowling alley appear in the corner of the floor. The commentator places a piston next to it, flips the switch, and automates the bowling as well.

Next, to transport giant piñatas, the commentator orders a large number of big slick panels. The setup is nearly the same as the register line: cushion panels are arranged in a V shape at the landing spot, and the piñatas are sent off by wind. However, since the contents of a broken piñata are worth more, obstacles are placed partway along the line so the piñatas crash into them and break. To keep the contents from scattering when they break, panels are also attached around the obstacles as a kind of roof. A wall is placed at the end of the line to kill the momentum, with bumpers on the other side of the wall to go for bonuses. Lining industrial fans around it completes the setup.

At first, the piñata maker's level is low and production is slow. Realizing about $500 million has piled up, the commentator buys an automated piñata machine for $10 million. Along with it, the commentator orders a cannon to launch piñatas and a shift scheduler to automate the firing. Attaching the cannon past the automated machine, adjusting its angle to merge into the existing outbound rail, and automating the firing with the scheduler gets piñatas supplied automatically. Upgrades also speed up work, and the commentator's money tops $1 billion.

Another alarm sounds. Space-time warps slightly, and "Anomaly Crates" are unlocked. Before touching the new element, the commentator builds a workspace near the giant pit. Combining extra-large panels that had become available at some point, the commentator builds a shed and turns it into a "gacha room" with a smallish entrance and an industrial fan.

The commentator converts all available funds into Anomaly Crates and opens them inside this shed. The anomalies inside are extremely unstable substances, but apparently opening them here makes them easy to deal with. After opening about 20 crates, the commentator has $80 billion.

Next, the commentator tackles a newly appeared mysterious machine. Since icons of three kinds of products are drawn on its surface, the commentator guesses it's an alchemy cauldron that combines them.

First, the commentator unlocks the automated machine for each product and builds lanes to transport them. Feeding directly into the cauldron seems like it would be hard to deal with if it clogged, so for now the lanes carry everything to the giant pit. For the ducks, which had previously been blown straight into the pit by wind, the commentator now carries them carefully by lane this time to improve reliability.

Once the three lanes are done, the commentator orders a large number of cannons and places them near the lanes. Since the contents get loaded through the wall, supplying the cannons takes priority, making it possible to branch the transport route. The commentator succeeds in adjusting the cannons' angles to fire into the cauldron, and syncs multiple cannons to a remote control to automate firing. Starting the cauldron requires manual operation, but attaching a "Proxy Intern" automates that as well.

The mysterious substance that comes out of the cauldron is handled by attaching a portal plate, bought for $100 million, near the exit and teleporting it to the giant pit. Magnets are also placed to keep anything from slipping through. After confirming that operating the cannons with the remote launches the three products and that they turn into anomalies inside the cauldron, the commentator finally has a shift scheduler run the remote operation periodically, completing the automation. The commentator's money tops $300 billion. Remarking that the giant pit seems to be getting wider, the commentator judges that there still seems to be room, so it should be fine for a while.

After that, another alarm sounds, but this time it isn't a transition to the next phase. The lines that were built collapse right before the protagonist's eyes, and surrounding objects are gradually sucked into the giant pit. As the protagonist also begins to be pulled in, the commentator tries to escape toward the elevator, but the suction is too strong to move. In the end, the protagonist is sucked into the giant pit, and the internship ends there.

Looking back, the commentator says they had expected a 3D incremental game where you just drop ducks by hand, but the automation elements turned out to be deeper than expected, and the game had a strong factory-game flavor. There were troubles typical of the genre, such as being thrown off by the unpredictable physics, and ducks clogging up while left idle, dropping the FPS to 0 and making it impossible to move, but overall the commentator says they were very satisfied. In particular, the commentator says the final alchemy cauldron design felt like a culmination of everything before it and was a lot of fun. The commentator closes the video by mentioning that there also appears to be an alternate-route ending that explores the hidden side of this company.