Huanhai: A Career in Ink

Whatever you sign stays signed.

Linshui County runs a standing deficit. Your predecessor left behind a stack of vouchers for doors and windows that were never built, a magistrate who wants clean accounts, clerks who want their firewood silver, and a secretary who has his own reasons for being so helpful.

You are the new County Assistant Magistrate. Every season, documents land on your desk: repair bills, grain loans, bandit bounties, tax assessments, petitions from the poorhouse, a classmate's desperate letter. Read them, decide what you believe, and bring down the seal.

A desk full of decisions

Every document is a choice. Approve it as filed, reject it, send it back for review, or take a cut. Each stamp shows which way your standing will move before you commit: Merit, Prospects, Patronage, Wealth, Deficit and Public Grievance all answer to the ink.

Audit with limited attention

Most papers hide a flaw: padded costs, a wrong sum, a seal that doesn't match, two names swapped. You only have so much Attention each year. Pick up the magnifier, and you might catch the lie. Let it pass, and it may come back to find you.

The Dark Ledger

Silver sticks to the hand that signs. Every tael you skim goes into a private ledger, and every entry has a witness. Burn pages when you can afford to. The censor inspects in Years 3, 6 and 7, and in the Grand Assessment at the end of your term, the ink speaks for itself.

Choices that echo

Pay off your secretary's old debt, and years later he may turn up with an armful of registers to shield you. Squeeze the county for the prefect's birthday, and the backlash will find its way back to your desk. Rumors drift in from the teahouse, true or false, and you won't know which until you act. Old favors are called in. Old enemies remember.

Seven years, five endings

Each year closes with a narrated chapter and a summary of what you did. After seven years, the Grand Assessment decides your fate: a clean record and promotion, shelter under a powerful patron, a quiet road home, or your name read out in a memorial of impeachment.

Free demo, then Early Access

The free demo covers your first three years in office and ends at the censor's first inspection. The full seven-year term and all five endings are in the Early Access version, which launches on Steam in December 2026; more cases and characters are planned during Early Access. Court hearings, where you question witnesses yourself, are in development.