"Congresswolf" — Is the next member of Congress a werewolf?

#1

We’re proud to announce that Congresswolf, the latest in our popular “Choice of Games” line of multiple-choice interactive-fiction games, is now available for Steam, iOS, and Android. It’s 25% off until Nov 1!

Is the next member of Congress a werewolf? Can you survive a lycanthrope’s bite? There’s no silver bullet for winning an election!

Congresswolf is an interactive novel by Ellen Cooper, where your choices control the story. It’s entirely text-based–140,000 words, without graphics or sound effects–and fueled by the vast, unstoppable power of your imagination.

“Democracy must be something more than two wolves and a sheep voting on what to have for dinner.” — James Bovard

When a werewolf murders your boss, you must step up to run a Congressional campaign all on your own. While werewolves, protestors, and worse–the media–lurk around every corner, you’ll use everything you can to get your candidate elected.

Email servers? Tax returns? Who cares. Election-season secrets and October surprises are nothing compared to the possibility that your candidate might be a werewolf…or that you might become one yourself.

  • Play as any gender, play as gay or straight
  • Set the right tone with your TV ads
  • Prep your candidate for debates
  • Impress big donors
  • Get out the vote
  • Find out who killed your predecessor
  • Decide where your candidate will stand on werewolf rights

We hope you enjoy playing Congresswolf. We encourage you to tell your friends about it, and recommend the game on StumbleUpon, Facebook, Twitter, and other sites. Don’t forget: our initial download rate determines our ranking on the App Store. The more times you download in the first week, the better our games will rank.

#2

Is there a Congresswolf thread? I can only find this one and the beta testers one.

#3

I think there’s a problem with the fundraising options. No matter what I do I always have a deficit in the budget which makes it impossible to do anything. Paying for a call center and website redesign didn’t even get me enough to break even. I just get the feeling something isn’t working as it should, unless the options correlate to the personal stats in a way I don’t understand.

#4

@Sneaks
Same, there are some problems on this thread on the steam version that I mention.

#5

The Ios version has worked fine regarding fundraising, and I really enjoyed the game! It was fun and political, and anyone who is in the politics thread here knows that those are my two favorite things.

My only criticism is that the chances for romancing someone were one time only and so obvious that I thought they were trying to trick the player into screwing up friendships.

#6

I enjoyed it, only complaint is that the epilogue could have been better. You get 1 paragraph at most on all the major decisions in the game, felt like it could have been expanded a bit at the very least for the final decision where you get to choose where you work. I thought it would be a big decision, turns out no it means basically nothing.

Also I don’t get why you act like you’re good friends with Jude at the end of the game. In my case, I was an asshole to Jude the entire time and it felt kind of jarring talking to him at the end as if you’re best friends.

#7

Jude is a man? I played the demo and Jude gender was never mentioned. Speaking of gender I don’t think you can choose the gender of your character, or I’m wrong?

#8

I don’t think I saw a mention what gender we are either. … Yay!

#9

I had male pronouns show up for Jude in my playthrough, if I’m remembering correctly–it isn’t particularly overt, but it’s there.

And yeah, gender for the MC just never came up as an option, similar to Diabolical

#10

Jude’s gender could be dependent on which congress person you work for - I haven’t met Jude yet so idk.

#11

This game gives a new meaning to the expression “Congresscritter.”

#13

I was wondering if anybody knows how to make Abby stay with you (where you get engaged)? There doesn’t seem to be any new threads created for the game, so I hope it’s okay to ask here.

#14

I ended up engaged to Abby by always choosing options which involved her (I’ll try to limit spoilers):
-calling her (your media contact) when you make that innitial discovery
-spend time with her straight after said discovery (I picked the third option here)
-call her to find out what drink her boss’d prefer
-not futher delaying your appearance at her party by stopping to hear someone out (I just invited them instead)
-choose all the ‘want this to go further’ relationship options
-contact her about J both times
-protected her source (I choose to issue a statement here)
-choose the third option (sorry your workload kept you apart) when she checks in
-choose ‘the people side with candidate’ during the argument
-choose to first option (get ahead of the story) when we were outed
-choose to work ‘closely’ together in the epilogue

I don’t know how many of these you ‘need’ to do, but they worked for my Abby-centric playthrough.

On that note, has anyone worked out how to become a werewolf yet, I’ve made it through nine playthroughs without it happening once, with different combinations of:
-liking/hating werewolves
-wanting/fearful of the possible infection
-pursuing/avoiding all 3 techniques to ensure outcome
-using Sydney’s research or the internet
-staying at the apartment or going to the office/park

The only thing I haven’t tried is choosing to ‘let fate decide’ without getting internet/Sydney’s advice first and so far I’ve only had ‘standing my ground and fighting (without gun)’ as the infection source.

Any help from those who’ve had their character change would be appreciated :slight_smile:

Cheers
Rowan/LSWSjr

Edit: Added three other possible relationship factors into the list

#15

The game was patched to take care of the finance problem but it seem like I still have it. I start by only investing in making money yet I alway end up running a deficit.

#16

There’s no way to recoup your starting money on the next month. You need to save some of your starting cash to cover deficits until you get your stats up enough to start running a surplus.

#17

Is Jonas really Maggie’s killer? I get the feeling they’re a red herring, but I haven’t seen anything to suggest they’re not the one.

I do want to say that I really enjoyed this game. The metaphor (lycanthropes as LGBT people) was clever, if not completely accurate (LGBT people aren’t known for going on bloody rampages), and the author’s understanding of the American political process really shows.

#18

Thank you so much for the help! I really appreciate it. By the way, I used the “Blow Thomas off” option and still got Abby’s ending. So that one certainly worked too.

I fiddled and got my character to turn into a werewolf, which I wasn’t successful during initial attempts either. If you haven’t already, here’s a breakdown of the options I chose.

[Minor Spoilers]

Start
-Be pro were-wolf (and continue doing so)
-Listen to Thomas
-Chose all the options till done

Discovery
-Call your Congressboss
-Observe Congressboss fully

After discovery
-Talk to Thomas
-Ask how is he turned
-Ask if he had contact with family

Later
-Use Sydney for research
-Be nice to Thomas
-When talking to Congressboss ask “how you feel about werewolves”, then be pro were-wolf.
-Choose the Vanguard pro were-wolf option

Party
-Choose find out what he wants (You don’t need to invite him at all)
-Don’t talk to anyone, leave as soon as you can.

Investigation
-Don’t tell anyone and completely ignore J( Don’t seek to protect yourself)

Attack
-Face head-on (standing your ground)[Thanks for the tip! I think this might play a good part]
-Use Sydney’s report to increase chances
-Choose get inadequate amounts of sleep

Next
-Continuing being pro-werewolf without pissing Abby off.
-Choose to go to the park/forest

Result
-You should transform.

And I don’t know if it matters, but when I got the corruption scandal (campaign bribe, finances, pro-quid pro), I do change. On another playthrough when I got another scandal, even when using the same options, I failed to change. Or more highly likely, is that there is some random luck generator at play going on.

#19

@Aereath @LSWSjr

All you need is to make sure you don’t have the gun to protect yourself, and face Jonas head on, even if you tell people as long as you choose to face him without a gun you get bitten if I remember correctly.

Later, you choose to increase your chances, then pick either 1 remedy to help increase your chances of turning, or no remedy to increase your job performance.

With no remedy you have a 1 in 2 chance of turning, with 1 remedy to help you have a 3 in 4 chance of turning. If you pick all three remedies then you should have a 100 percent chance of turning, but it is currently bugged, so you just lose job performance and approval for your candidate and don’t turn.

#20

Thanks for explaning the mechanics, so that why choosing all 3 options never helped :slight_smile:

Cheers
Rowan/LSWSjr

#21

Sorry, what about endings involving Thomas and Abby?