Life of a Shipping Executive v0.2 (WIP)

[Writing_Executive]

Live an alternate life in the Maritime Industry.

You are but a drop in the ocean.

Your actions will not change the world, at least not at the start.

But they can shape your career, and there’s a sweet ladder you can climb.

Unlike real life, this ladder actually responds to your choices.

The year is 2004, and you’re based in Singapore, a beating heart of global shipping.

With China newly integrated into the WTO, international trade is surging at breakneck pace. Shipping growth outpaces the global economy, fortunes are being made, and opportunity beckons to those bold enough to seize it.

You’re a fresh graduate with one foot through the door. The other taps nervously, as you edge closer to whatever fate has in store.

Will you rise through the ranks, or be swept away like so many others?

Step into the Life of a Shipping Executive:

• Take your career into your own hands - from aspiring trainee to middle management.

• Ride industry booms and feel the sting of sudden busts.

• Run shipping operations, juggle client demands, survive or thrive on corporate politics.

• Opportunities & Crises abound - and ships never stop moving.

• Forge alliances, spark rivalries, and discover who never forgets your choices.

• Explore romance - not a core focus, but alive and meaningful.

The choice is yours: Will you be remembered as a maritime visionary, a staunch corporatist, or an ascendant dealmaker?

To play the demo, go here:

Life of a Shipping Executive

If you’d like to support the development, go here:

Writing Executive’s Patreon

#Shipping #Real-life #Ladders #Executive #Career #LoSE

gender-choice modern-fantasy

Hosted Games > Works In Progress

Game Development progress

Update 2: You take an interview + Easter Eggs (35,800 words)

Update 1: You step into a building (14,200 words)

Total Words (code inclusive): ~ 50k

Greetings

Dear Gamer,

Hello there. I’d like to introduce you to my WIP: Life of a Shipping Executive (LoSE).

It’s grounded in reality and inspired by my personal experiences. Also, it has a perfect acronym.

This passion project is very dear to me. Being employed full-time means I can’t commit all my time and energies to progressing the story, but I’m determined to see it through to completion.

If you like the game, can relate to my life experiences, or are simply curious to see more - welcome aboard!

Your voice, feedback, and encouragement are invaluable to me. We can achieve this together .

Yours truly,

Writing Executive

AI Disclosure:

I primarily use Google search and Copilot to research business topics, key landmarks, technology constructs, country economics, building architecture, color palettes, and historical compensation indices, which I incorporate into the game. The research supplements my existing personal and industry expertise and is aimed at enhancing its life-like appeal. I intend for Life of a Shipping Executive to be grounded in reality, and in fact industry veterans would be able to tell right away where I get my inspiration from when they see the fictional company name within.

The concept ideas, worldbuilding, prose, character interactions, stats choice setup, code, and branching pathways were developed by me and shaped by my life experiences.

I did test some LLMs such as ChatGPT and Gemini. They did not give me satisfactory outputs for the story that I wanted to tell, and in fact taught me incorrect code when I asked them to teach me ChoiceScript. From my perspective, they’re not quite at the level of creative writing yet. That being said, I wouldn’t rule out the possibility that they could get there in some years time. It’s a fast-paced world we live-in, and I hope to leave my little mark in history through this game right before the next page is turned.

No — This project does not contain the output of Generative AI

About the Author:

I’m something of a maritime industry insider, and very much an office drone. I’ve been privy to multiple high-stakes business contract negotiations, sailed for over a week in a container ship, and been responsible for the productive movement of thousands of containers on a monthly basis. I hope you can glean some of that personal insight through this game too.

I’m still actively employed in the industry, and intend to remain so (at least until writing or another passion can support my livelihood). For this reason, I’m maintaining anonymity because some of the game contents will relate to actual lived experiences or persons. While nothing written will be too scathing, I’d still prefer to maintain a private persona for the time-being.

I intend to pour my life’s work into this game, and infuse it with touches of dramatization. I’ll leave it to your astute discernment as to which scenarios are real or just figments of my imagination.

I’ve been an Interactive Fiction fan for the longest time now, at least a decade…

It was Choice of Broadsides that really drew me into the IF genre. Next up was Choice of the Dragon, and then Heroes Rise: The Prodigy.

Writing Executive’s hot-takes on some of the well-known IF titles

Samurai of Hyuga series: I can’t believe there’s a book 5 now! Haven’t kept track in a long time, and I recall enjoying books 1 and 2 very much. Glad to see the project is alive and well, I need to set aside some time in the medium term future to go binge-reading again.

I, the Forgotten One + Lords of Aswick + War for the West: Shout-out to these medieval masterpieces!

Fallen Hero: I keep hearing this game is incredible but for some reason, I couldn’t get into it. Maybe I’m just not into superheroes lately. Hopefully, the calling and thrill of the read will come another day.

SLAMMED!: Is simply amazing. It captivated me from start to end, and this is coming from someone who doesn’t follow wrestling and only recognizes a few of the biggest names in the sport.

Infinity Series: That this brilliant author struggles to make ends meet offends me. He details war and intrigue like how the final season of GOT should’ve been. He’s only one of two authors that I’ve bought multiple copies of a game from on 2 separate devices - the other being Kevin Gold’s Choice of Robots - also a masterpiece.

Stars Arisen: Another well-rated game I couldn’t get into. I think the writing’s good, but the playthrough was highly frustrating because I couldn’t see the link between conversation choices and how my stats changed. I picked the choices I liked and as a result got rejected by the game more times than my high school crush. If we need to grind our stats through conversations, that’s not roleplay anymore, it’s a chore.

Life of a Wizard: Yes, I’ve played this title before. But clearly, my game will mirror real life more closely . I really like the theme and variety of magic options offered. The drawbacks are on the character development and replay depth - because the narrative arc barely changes, you just read different flavor text for spells and attributes. 10/10 would let the princess have my child and incinerate the mad king again.

King of Dragon Pass: Not a CoG or Hosted Games label, but very much under the IF genre. If you like clan management, economic simulation, tribal diplomacy, with a dash of magic infused within. I’d definitely recommend KoDP.

VERSUS Trilogy: Ever wait so long for a game that you just kind of give up on it? Yea that’s what happened with me while waiting for Book 3. I was so hyped after Book 1 and Book 2, but after 4 years of waiting and a pandemic to boot, I gave up on waiting.

Tin Star: Cannot recommend this one enough, just play it!

I write in my journal and hope every day that I can find the strength to keep pouring my personal experiences and imagination into Life of a Shipping Executive. It would be my way to give back to the community after a long long time and finally flip the script as a writer, not just a passive enjoyer.

If you made it this far, thank you! Happy to discuss life topics together.

[MIGSey]

Honestly, an interesting concept. I can tell this is an area you are very much well-versed in, based on my initial read. Wishing you all the best with this project.

[TonyG]

Only played through once, for now. Here’s what I found:

Some screenshots

Missing name.

Missing period after “hope you don’t mind” and missing name.

Mr. Christopher - I think last name is more appropriate here than first name

“10.08am” I think should be 10:08am

“as the as the”

Interesting concept, though I did feel like some of the sections read like a job posting with all the bullet points and list of responsibilities etc. Gave me PTSD lol.

[Writing_Executive]

@MIGSey Thanks for the well-wishes!

@TonyG Thanks for the feedback, I’ll look through these after a good night’s sleep, haha.

Oh dear, I have a close friend who’s in between jobs at the moment and I try to stay well clear of that term

[Dazial]

hello, as an author I know much feedback means to our work and motivation to write, so I thought I should let you know someone gave you a positive review on the hosted games subreddit.

[dozendietcokesaday]

Love seeing someone else write a grounded Asian slice-of-life story!! Those are too rare here.

I appreciate the lush sensory description and scene setting. Really immerses the player. Can’t wait to be a mid-level Neptune executive!

[Writing_Executive]

Hello @Dazial , thanks for letting me know! I hadn’t realized. Glad to see people like this mini-demo.

There’s so much writing to be done, haha.

[Pumpkaboo]

Just wanted to say, I wholeheartedly agree with almost all of your IF takes, especially the infinity saga. That shit is phenomenal

[Dryinspection]

As others mentioned. Always nice to see niche topics get an IF of their own. The no compensation info upfront till accepted hits too close to home though…

Will be following up on it.

[postalspring]

I played the demo and was already hooked, but then I read your IF takes and found out that you also love and recommend TIN STAR??? Instant follow

[Fye]

Interesting concept, enjoyed it more than I thought I would really looking forward for more(also loved the Pride & Prejudice Edition)

[Jackpot1776]

This is a cool idea! I realize that it might say something about me that id rather pretend to be a shipping executive instead of actually doing it haha, but here we are.

I did find one bug, in the stats screen your age is 22 at the beginning, switches to 21 at the end. Not exactly sure where or if its intentional, but just something i noticed.

Ill be following!!

[kckolbe]

Not sure what feedback to give, as it’s still so early. We haven’t really seen any of the mechanics at play. I am very interested, though, and wanted to at least express that

[Writing_Executive]

That’s interactive fiction for us! We get to live many lives through the lenses of others.

Ah, that would be intentional. The initial stats page is that of a generic character.

After you customize your own character and select your first stat-bump, one of the options elaborates how you were able to graduate earlier and start your career 1 year ahead of the regular cohort.

[fsix]

Bit of an odd thing – somehow this demo seems to be missing the save functionality of other titles at cogdemos. It can make testing quite a bit more of a slog, with no ability to backtrack other than start from the beginning.

[Writing_Executive]

Hi @fsix , thanks for the feedback. The save feature is part of the CoGDemos website and appears as a selectable checkbox on my game management page. I have ticked the checkbox. Could you confirm it works?

I tested with other games and observed it opens up both a quick save option as well as manual export and import saves, neat.

[Writing_Executive]

Hello @TonyG,

The screenshots are really helpful to illustrate which parts are off. Time standardized by 10:08am. Inserted the period. And adopted title + surname for when the interviewer bids you farewell too.
The missing name was actually intended. Cause I wrote it like how someone would speak it i.e. ‘Mister,’ or ‘Miss,”, not necessarily needing a name or surname.

But I realize abbreviated form ‘Mr.,’ or ‘Ms.,” doesn’t look so smooth on text. So now I’ve converted them to show as e.g., Mr. Smith or Ms. Pendragon now haha. Title + surname too ~
And another funky part is when i pressed Ctrl F in my text file and searched “as the as the”, I couldn’t find any result in my text file and had to scroll manually to that section. This is when the screenshot came in extra useful.

I’m looking to release another update this weekend and you’ll see the changes then.

Thanks for catching these!

[fsix]

@Writing_Executive

I have ticked the checkbox. Could you confirm it works?

Yup it seems to be working now, thank you for addressing it. I’m looking forward to more of the game, both the theme and the execution so far are very much up my alley :>

(one more thing you might want to consider regarding the cogdemos switches is to enable the ability to view game code. This can help to track down more obscure errors, like branches or text variants getting skipped due to malformed conditions or bad formatting, etc)

[Writing_Executive]

I’m glad to hear that, more will come!

Yes I’m aware of the make code available to all function. I’m opting not to check that for the time-being. With the current word count (10k+), I believe the game runs perfectly fine, and I make it a point to scan through every few k words or so for tightness and if it flows the way I intended for it in my mind.

Also, disposition-wise I’m leaning towards paranoia/cynicism for this function, having experienced my fair share of betrayals in life before. This work is my baby, and even the slightest thought of someone stealing it away is unbearable. That’s the risk we run when making a lot of details public. We get all the good, and it comes with all the bad too. Not everyone is as well-intentioned as you kind stranger.

At some point, the game will probably reach a stage where it becomes really bulky and infeasible for one person to look after. I’ll keep you in mind for when/if that time comes! Haha

[fsix]

@Writing_Executive

This work is my baby, and even the slightest thought of someone stealing it away is unbearable.

I have a bit of bad news if this is the case – the way ChoiceScript games work, practically entire script is freely accessible to anyone who plays the game, no matter if you make it explicit. (for whatever reasons, the interpreter has the source script loaded as part of the object which holds all the game state variables etc)

Granted, the risk might be slightly higher if the code is made (even more) easily accessible, but i’m afraid the knowledge how to access itt is widespread enough, so this possibility is just something you’d have to accept as part of the package. Kind of like it goes for any artist/author choosing to share their work with the public nowadays.