Fix it, Please!

INSPECT. APPROVE. OBEY.

July 2000. The city runs on PIX CORP's schedule, and whoever isn't on the corporation's lists doesn't exist at all. You are the new technical specialist: cubicle 1-B, floor minus one, a window into the corridor, a stamp and a terminal with the staff database. Three people worked here before you. One quit, one collected three strikes, and the third simply didn't show up one day - and no record of him remains.

The job is simple: check the form, stamp it, don't ask questions. But on the very first evening a courier leaves a sealed envelope on your desk, and its addressee isn't on any list.

A shift at the window

Badges. Check every field of the form against the database, the round seal against four kinds of forgery, and the photo against whoever is standing at the window. ISSUE, DENY or SECURITY. When the form can't be faulted but the person still raises doubts, you have a UV lamp, a call to HR and a photo from the personnel file. Cameras. Intruders smash glass and cover the walls with writing the janitors have scrubbed off before. Leave the janitors alone: they're only mopping the floor, and a false call to security costs money. Tickets. Eight breakdowns from the sysadmin's queue - viruses, frozen PCs, pulled cables, empty paper trays, stuck floppies. Each one has its own deadline.

Parcels and keys. Check the waybill against the floor directory and X-ray anything suspicious. Sometimes the address on the waybill leads where the elevator doesn't go.

The queue. The person behind the glass won't wait forever - they grumble, they leave, and their department remembers. The clock is ticking; the hooter sounds at 21:00.

A roguelike of red tape

Three strikes and the run is over. The box for your things turns out surprisingly light. The ledger. After every shift you're docked for housing, meals and upkeep on everything you've bought. Between shifts the supply depot sells a UV lamp, a camera filter, a second phone line, coffee and a cat. Special days. A commission on site, a crunch, pest control, payday - nine orders that change the rules for a single shift. Signatures and blots. The people you helped will sign for you, and every favor that bends the rules is a blot on your file. By day seven they get tallied: without three signatures, the audit has nothing to show. The town card index. 160 permanent residents, and the database remembers them between runs: who you turned away last Friday, who holds a grudge, who can't stop talking. A book of rumors - and every rumor has an event that confirms it.

The same Friday. Again.

Every day is Friday, 21 July 2000. After the seventh day comes Friday again. The second time around, the tower knows your face; the third time, someone at the window talks about the loop out loud. Everything you notice goes into the evidence folder. By the end of the week, someone will ask about it.

A training shift and three loops of the same week 13 pieces of evidence, 9 endings - from a box of belongings to a Saturday nobody in this city remembers Locker 44 in the archive survives the cycle - leave there whatever your next self will need Somewhere inside the badge terminal lives an old game. And not just one.

And more

Order #41-K, for two. Two technicians at one desk in cubicle 1-B: one has the form, the other the database, and the roles swap with every visitor. Every decision takes both signatures. Invite a partner through Steam - for a shift or for the story week. Mail for friends. Put together a form with a catch or a parcel with a surprise for a friend on Steam or by personnel number, and find out what they did with it. The network is optional: the whole story plays fine without it. On air. Chat joins the queue and votes on whoever is at the window. Gamepad. The entire shift from a controller - every action has its own button. Endless Friday, Daily Shift with a shared seed, Archive, Mines and Elektronika challenges for a high score, hardcore mode, 33 achievements.