Hero Mode (2021)

With her indie video game business (Playfield Games) on the brink of bankruptcy after a game that received negative reception leaks before a gaming convention. Kate, the CEO had shared a copy of the game (Jackhouse) with a new investor. The Investor was at Kate's house party where he met Kate's son Troy and ended up taking his opinion on the game.

Troy doesn't know that it is his mom's game and points out all the bugs in it. The investor leaves the party mid-way and thinks he dodged a bullet. Troy is mortified and stays up all night to fix the coding errors and bugs in Jackhouse. Banks have refused extending any more credit to Kate. In addition, Rick (Nelson Franklin), the CEO of a rival company Exodus looking to buy out the studio in order to gut it and fire everyone'. Exodus is also releasing a new, ultra-cool game at Pixelcon in 30 days, which will blow Playfield away. Kate (Mira Sorvino) puts Troy (Chris Carpenter), her teenage coding genius son, in charge of fixing Jackhouse to save the company which has to be completed in 30 days in time for an upcoming gaming convention, Pixelcon. Goodson (Bobby Lee) is the Vice Principal of the school where he studies, and Mr. Diehl (Erik Griffin) is his computers teacher. Goodson suspends Troy for hacking into the NSF database and altering standardized test scores for 80 students, which helped the school win a bucket-load of computers for their science lab. Nick (Philip Solomon) is Troy's best friend. Troy is enthusiastic for the job. But the company's disgruntled coders are not (Lyndon (Monte Markham) is CFO. Laura (Mary Lynn Rajskub) is tech lead. Marie (Kimia Behpoornia) is the story writer. Jimmy (Sean Astin) is lead designer). Paige (Indiana Massara) is Lyndon's grand-daughter and Troy has a huge crush on her. In light of the cash flow situation, Lyndon wants Kate to fire a few employees, but she refuses. Troy starts working on the game. But he is not a social person, so he asks all employees to go home, so he can work on the game alone and make progress. This goes on for the next 2-3 days. 25 days till Pixelcon and Troy brings the team back in to show what he has done. The entire team is puzzled to learn that Troy has been working on a whole new game "the World of Yort" and didn't even look at Jackhouse. Jimmy feels that the team has lost precious time, with nothing to show for it. Kate butts in and shows the new Exodus game "Alien Reaper". Which is slick and dark as compared to the childish looking Jackhouse. Kate wants the team to back up Troy and help him design his new game from the ground up. The team bombards Troy with all their questions re: technical and aesthetic aspects of the game. Troy wants to do it all by himself, but Kate encourages Troy to work with the team, including Jimmy, who has been nothing but obstructive towards all of Troy's ideas. Paige has stage fright and Troy builds a custom app just for her, to practice speaking to a crowd. Jimmy speaks 1:1 to Troy and asks why he doesn't want to work on Jackhouse. Troy says that Jackhouse is childish and "World of Yort" (Yort is just Troy spelled backwards) is magical and mythical. Troy learns from Lyndon that Kate has mortgaged her house to keep paying salaries to her employees. Meanwhile Nick edits an old video of Troy saying "Xodus sucks" and uploads to you tube. This is bad, since Kate is looking forward to getting Xodus to buy play-field. Troy accidentally downloads a virus (by opening an email from Jimmy) to his laptop, which he had set up to the node to the entire office network. The virus will wipe out all the hardware. The office thinks Jimmy did this deliberately. The computers are fried, even the backups are gone. All source code for Jackhouse and "World of Yort" is gone. The staff decides to quit together but are stopped by a DVD of Kate and her husband George (who is now dead), from 10 years ago, when they launched Playfield games, and said that they are all a family. Troy is dejected and reaches out to Nick. Nick confides to Troy that he gave a copy of the codes to Mr Diehl, who is a huge fan of Troy's computer games. This means the source code is not all wiped out. It is still there. They use the new computers that the school won and set up their new network. It is revealed that Xodus was behind the virus that hit Playfield. Troy reaches out to Jimmy and wants him to come back and help with converting the Jackhouse maps for "the world of Yort". The team assembles at Troy's high school. Jimmy clarifies to the team that he never sent the email to Troy. Basically, the team decides that they cannot compete with exodus on graphics and sounds. So, they compete on experience. They design a game, in which Gamers can design their own world and then play in it. 9 days to Pixelcon. On Pixelcon day, Troy is ready to launch Brainstorm. Kate decides to hold off signing with Xodus until after Pixelcon. Troy has to present his game after Xodus, but the console won't boot up. Their presentation spot arrives, and the demo is still not working. Paige steps up to the plate and takes the stage. She sings a song to keep the audience engaged till Troy can fix the demo. Turns out Rick was holding a signal Jammer which would not allow any computer to latch on to the network. Lyndon breaks the Jammer and Rick's jaw. The demo is hugely successful, and Playfield wins the best new game category. Troy and Paige kiss. Later, Troy sends worm into Xodus's network and fries all of their computers.