Recursion follows the the story of a girl, Lilac, who works at a convenience store at a late shift. Every evening, when she goes to sleep, she has the same recurring nightmare a random man will get her at her work place. Eventually Lilac becomes tired of this and decides to defeat the man in her dream to stop this cycle of nightmare. The game play revolves around Lilac ( you ) collecting four items in a seven minute time limit to defeat the man. To collect the items, you have to find them. While you struggle to find them within the time frame, enemies you can defeat will come around and try and defeat you. If you do not have all four items, you will get a game over at the time limit. If you have all four items and win, it will trigger a winning cut scene and end the game.