INKQUISITION

A dystopian document-stamping game

Read the papers, cross them against rules that change overnight, sometimes retroactively, and decide who gets through. The quota is not negotiable. It is a formality. It is also the rest of your life.

You are a newly posted clerk at a document-control counter of a crumbling 1980s ministry. Ring the bell, call the next applicant, and decide who passes and who is turned away — one stamp at a time. Every day the rules change, the queue grows, and the paperwork gets harder to trust.

What you do

Each shift plays out at your desk. An applicant steps to the window and slides their papers across. Your job is to cross-check everything against the regulations currently in force and reach a verdict before the day runs out.

• Read the papers— a request form and an identity card, with names, dates, sectors, registry numbers, photographs and signatures that must all agree.

• Check the rules — open the Memoranda drawer to see the directives in force today. They contradict yesterday's, single out new sectors, and add conditions that turn a valid file into a rejection.

• Investigate — reach for the tools on your desk: a magnifier, an ultraviolet lamp for hidden microprint, a signature comparator, a stature gauge, and the registry terminal.

• Question them — put questions to the applicant and weigh their answers against what the documents say.

• Pass judgement — pick up the APPROVE or REJECT stamp and press it onto the form. Later, harder verdicts open up: refer, detain, denounce, file.

The paper fights back

Documents don't always arrive neat. Sheets come torn in half and must be pieced together, crumpled and smoothed, stapled shut, or soaked by the rain so the stamp won't take. Ink runs low and must be recharged; a long shift leaves your hand unsteady, so the impression lands where it will, not where you aimed.

Consequences

Meet the daily quota or answer for it. Every mistake earns a citation and eats into your pay; the balance you carry home decides whether your household makes it through the night. Timed files, bribes, denunciations and a supervisor who is always reading over your shoulder all pull you in different directions.

A different shift every time

• Every run rolls a fresh seed: a new calendar, new weather, new rule-books.

• Draw perks and curses that reshape how you work — for better and worse.

• A Random Rules mode derives the entire regulation set from the seed.

• See a run through to an ending to unlock more for the next one.

Atmosphere

Hand-drawn film-noir art, a rain-blown skyline through the office window, a flickering fluorescent tube, and a desk radio you can tune between stations.

Features

• Rules that change daily and reward careful reading over speed.

• A deskful of inspection tools and diegetic controls.

• Roguelike replayability: seeds, perks, curses, random rules, multiple endings.

• An branching intro and a grim bureaucratic story that unfolds day by day.

Stamp carefully. The Ministry is watching.