(WIP) The Bureau - Chapters 1-4 (550k+ Total Words) UPDATED 08/08/2024

Someone message me the laptol password plz my memory is horrible

1 Like

the code! for (anyone who needs it). :grin:
my bad for spoiling!!
[spoiled]

Password!

moneymaker457

16 Likes

Thank you for helping people out! I would just ask that you put it in either a hide detail or a blurred text option, that wqy people coming to the forum for unrelated reasons don’t get spoiled :purple_heart:

5 Likes

Sorry I’m just getting around to replying to this; hectic week for sure.

Thank you! I try my best to make choices effect your stats, and not the other way around. I feel like being able to pick any choice you want in order to have a character broad enough to react in certain ways to certain things is something I really wanted to do, because a shy character shouldn’t ever be completely locked out of being forthright, and vice versa. (Someone who’s forthright and outspoken in their field but shy with their S.O. is one of my personal favorite character archetypes.)

Absolutely, it’s only really after the funeral that characters begin to open up a bit more. Grief is the theme of this book, just as Fear will be the theme for the next book!

I’m glad you enjoyed that mechanic! It’s been a bit of a mixed bag, but for the most part, I think the consensus is that people liked it, which I’m happy about! Granted, there are some accessibility changes I’m still planning to make to it in case people want them, but that’s neither here nor there.

Writing that last scene was possibly some of the most intensive stuff I’ve had to do. In order to keep the scope to a reasonable level, I had to try to come up with dialogue that was vague enough to fit different MC’s, but that was indicative of the way that MC chose to react, so I’m hoping I got that balance correct.

I’m glad you’re enjoying the book so far!

2 Likes

So I played the demo. I think I’m in love with S. Especially the part where you can touch their face and get burned but ignore it because you’re concerned for them.

5 Likes

Everyone, I have officially finished my short 20k game demo for the Halloween Jam; “Golden Eyes”! It was fun (and frustrating at times) to figure out all the different coding involved with a redirect_scene checkpoint based system, but definitely a really good learning experience. If you like my writing, and you like horror, and you like explicit content; go check it out!

School is still in full force, and I’m still focusing primarily on my studies, but this was a fun thing to do in the off time, and it has made me SO EXCITED to keep working on The Bureau. Honestly, doing a game jam and completing a project; knowing and having the experience of completing something even as small as this, makes you so much more confident. I know The Bureau is going to be a million word behemoth by the time it’s finished, but knowing that nothing I code in this game will ever be as intensive or thought provoking as what I coded in Golden Eyes is a huge boost as well.

Thank you all for sticking around and supporting my writing!

13 Likes

Golden Eyes is pretty good. But the link to The Bureau is also leading to Golden Eyes right now.

2 Likes

Thank you for making me aware! I… have no idea how that’s happening…

EDIT: I… may have accidentally uploaded the files for Golden Eyes into Bureau. Gonna see if making those blank does anything to fix it since they can’t be deleted

2 Likes

@nightflame Okay, we’re good LMAO Just had to update the correct stats and startup page again. Files for golden eyes are just gonna live inside the dashingdon version of the bureau forever now I guess LOL

2 Likes

Yep seems to be working fine now. You’ve solved it so quick too, thanks.
Been meaning to replay it, didnt expect to be able to so fast.

I mostly just lurk around but let me say you’re doing a great job with The Bureau.

1 Like

Thank you, that really means a lot! I’m very glad you’re enjoying the game, and I hope to be able to push out the same quality of content in the future!

2 Likes

Okay everyone, I figured I’d make a new poll right about now as I continue to work on the next part of Chapter 4 for this story. We are over halfway at this point in the story, even though there is more to come, but development will most likely take a bit longer still because to put it bluntly, the amount of different endings you’re going to be able to get is… quite a lot. It may change, but at the moment, the total amount of different ending sequences you’ll be able to get is 24.

Yes. 24 ending variations.

Yes. Writing that out alone makes me exhausted.

My point being, knowing that alone, along with how much I branch this story out between interactions and hidden side stories (55k average word playthrough in a 600k demo), how many times do you see yourself playing through “The Bureau”?

How many times are you going to play through “The Bureau”?
  • I only play through games once
  • I’ll play about 2-4 times before I put it down
  • I’ll play 5+ times so I can see all the different variations
0 voters
9 Likes

I’ve only recently found this demo and really liked it and fell in love with Arthur. I’ve enjoyed exploring different options and how every choice brings something new. It’s fun how I can gather various information about Arthur by talking with other characters. And I see myself exploring Kris and Carters paths in the future.
Also I’ve noticed some inconsistency: If I choose to talk to Arthur on the train and say “It is something else” (so MC doesn’t play chess with Arthur), Arthur explaines his mutation and it’s drawbacks. Then MC went to talk to Carter. After that I’ve chose to go with Arthur and Sam to the alley and MC always behaves like he doesn’t know about Arthur’s mutation and option “His eyes must really be bothering him.” doesn’t appear.

6 Likes

Thank you for the kind words and the bug report. I shall put it on the list of things to do with the next update!

EDIT: Also, I think I’ve decided that the sex scenes won’t be overly explicit in this work. I’ve given it a lot of thought, and I’ve assessed what I would feel comfortable writing. They won’t be as lax as Wayhaven’s (I only use that example because a lot of people will know how descriptive those are since a lot of people have played that series) but they won’t be full on descriptive either. Think of it as… a series from STARZ. That’s about the extent it’d go.

So to sum up how I would describe them; a lot of them will have detailed descriptions of things leading up to the main course, but past that will be vague descriptions. You’ll still be able to pick all the different top/bot/shy/confident options for the scenes, they will simply be changing what your character does during foreplay, essentially. I realize this may disappoint some people, and I apologize for that.

Some of it comes from willingness and lack of comfort to write, well let’s be honest, porn, for random people I don’t know. Another part of it is this idea that I don’t want people to play my game because they heard it has sex in it. I don’t want that to be a main draw to a story that means so much to me. I want my game to describe intimate moments between characters based on what it adds to their relationship. I never want to add something to a story that doesn’t add something to the story, if that makes sense.

In my Golden Eyes demo, it was explicit because it was symbolic. It was meant to convey something more than just sex, and even meant to give the reader a sense of unease after realizing what it meant. It wasn’t just porn; it had a point. This story, at the very least at the moment, would not benefit artistically from having the same amount of descriptive details in its explicit scenes.

I recognize this choice goes against the poll that was taken before on this thread. I did think hard about this decision and I did take that poll into consideration. Again, I apologize to those that are disappointed by this outcome.

Explicit scenes work fine for other games, and I would say even benefit them. Detailed explicit scenes will most likely be in the full version of Golden Eyes when that releases, because it would add to the story. At this moment, detailed explicit scenes in The Bureau would just serve no other purpose other than to appeal to an audience this book was never meant to reach in the first place, and to me, that would wound the integrity of what I am trying to create.

Thank you all for understanding, and I hope you still look forward to more of my story as it progresses.

29 Likes

I should’ve made this a separate post, so I’m just going to reply to it so people have a better chance of seeing this update.

9 Likes

You scared the hell out of me here for a moment. I was all “WHY ARE ROBOTS INVOLVED?”

I hate daylight savings time and need more coffee.

3 Likes

Im fine with the decision either way, but I argue that having sex scenes wouldn’t appeal to another audience, this game already appeals primarily to adults, wich already are the primary consumer (I hope) of sexual content in IFs.

Having detailed sex scenes would just become another selling point to the game, alongside having murder, or having a muscular female, “m-mommy?” comments related to this WIP come to mind.

6 Likes

@VilsBae I can’t find “Golden Eyes” if, am I not understanding something?) I didn’t even knew about this😭 is it not up anymore?

1 Like

Hey there, I realized there was no place for people to talk about Golden Eyes, so I made it it’s own forum page, as I will eventually turn it into a full game. You can find that here: https://forum.choiceofgames.com/t/golden-eyes-wip-the-bureau-spin-off-project-20k-words/144834

12 Likes

Well, the semester is almost over. That means soon I’ll have more time to work on the game than the slow chipping away I’ve been doing as of late. As of this moment, the current update I’m working on is about 7500 new words. I also have to make that small segue on the train and add an option to go sit alone, in which case Special Agent Alvarez will come over and talk to the PC voluntarily. There are also apparently some gender mix-ups I’ve missed in one of the routes, so I’ll have to fix those as well.

It’s gotten to the point in the game where choices will start reappearing and begin to affect the dialogue and subsequent choices the player gets in a more substantial way, which includes getting dialogue that otherwise just wouldn’t appear at all. This has to do with attitude levels with the MCT, Stats, and what you chose your chosen profession to be before the MCT that your PC was working towards, which you saw a bit of already in the Coroner’s Office scene.

So this is… gonna be a lot. A lot of *if statements to write, which means a lot of labels, but to be honest, after coding Golden Eyes, this really is nothing in comparison to how many labels I had to do for that game (literally one at the beginning of every page).

So yeah, just a small update to let everyone know the progress of the game. It’s getting there. Slowly but surely.

38 Likes