(WIP) The House of Egmont (40k+ words)

A romantic drama-comedy interactive novel set in the glittering, ruthless world of early-2000s fashion media.

You never wanted this job.

Fresh out of university and determined to build a serious career in journalism, you expected your first step into Viremont Media to be a modest editorial position that would be something respectable and far removed from celebrity gowns and couture politics.

Instead, through an administrative mistake you can’t seem to undo, you’ve been assigned as junior assistant to Vivienne Egmont, the notoriously exacting editor-in-chief of Aureum, the most influential fashion magazine in the world.

No one lasts under Vivienne longer than a few weeks. Her standards are impossible and her approval nearly mythical. In the polished halls of Aureum, where reputations are made and ruined between runway shows and cover shoots, your ignorance is obvious, and your failure expected.

But, hey, surviving one impossible day becomes surviving another. Then another, right? As your footing in this world grows steadier, so does your proximity to the women who define it: rivals, allies, icons, and perhaps something more. Perhaps what began as an unwanted assignment becomes a dangerous invitation into power.

Will you adapt and thrive in a world you once dismissed as shallow? Will you hold fast to the person you were before Aureum changed you? When ambition, loyalty, and love collide, what will you become?

Romance Options:

Vivienne Egmont
The legendary editor-in-chief of Aureum is brilliant, feared, impeccably composed, and utterly intolerant of mediocrity. Earning her trust may prove harder than surviving her expectations.

Clara Whitmore
Viremont’s polished and socially effortless public relations executive. She’s charming and always three steps ahead. Clara makes power look graceful, but perhaps there’s a lot more layers.

Elise Park
Vivienne’s razor-sharp senior assistant and your reluctant mentor. Competitive, exacting, and impossible to impress… though perhaps not impossible to understand.

Serena Valemont
An international supermodel and actress with a reputation for entitlement and chaos. The woman behind the myth may be far more complicated than the headlines suggest.

Features

  • Play as a male protagonist navigating the intensely female-dominated world of luxury fashion media in 2004

  • Shape your personality and appearance

  • Rise from reluctant outsider to indispensable insider. Or, well, reject the world trying to remake you

  • Navigate office politics and scandals at the highest levels of Viremont Media

  • Pursue four distinct female romance routes, from slow-burn professional tension to glamorous chaos

  • Decide what success means and what it will cost you

Disclaimer:

This project was kickstarted by my love for the movie The Devil Wears Prada. I don’t claim any credit for inspiration I’ve gotten by the wonderful characters, and when you see any glaring similarities, please keep this in mind. I hope you enjoy!

Developer’s Note:

Hi! This is my first interactive fiction project, and I’m very much learning as I go.

The story is genderlocked to a male protagonist with female romance options because I specifically wanted to explore the gender dynamics of a young man entering an elite, female-dominated industry. I’m also.. uh.. entirely new to coding, so I wanted to keep the project’s scope manageable while I learn ChoiceScript and interactive storytelling.

I’d genuinely love feedback, whether that’s thoughts on the premise, character dynamics, features you’d want to see, or things that would make this more compelling to play. Oh, and any errors, grammatical or otherwise!

Thanks for reading!

To play the demo, go here: https://cogdemos.ink/go/7687

AI Disclosure:

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

72 Likes

I figured that within one second of reading the game description. :sweat_smile:


This is a stats screen!

Remove this from the stat screen.


You watch in amazement as she doesn’t so much as blink, sidestepping your clumsy feet while continuing a conversation on her Blackberryy in what you think is rapid-fire French.

Blackberry


It’s a bit short at the moment, so there’s not a lot of feedback I have.

Good luck

3 Likes

Can I ask why you picked this specific name? Egmond is a Dutch village name, (well, specifically Egmond Binnen (Inner Egmond), Egmond aan Zee (Egmond near the sea), and Egmond aan den Hoef) and it always feels a little bizarre to run into those (and Dutch words in general) in fiction.

3 Likes

That’s a really fun catch, actually and not accidental! I liked “Egmont” because it sounded like the kind of name the protagonist would immediately clock as absurdly expensive and intimidatingly upper-class (which is why he internally labels it “bougie” almost on sight). That first impression is very intentional, and perhaps you know of the actual “House of Egmond” family.

Without spoiling too much, Vivienne’s relationship to that name is… complicated. She didn’t exactly grow up in the world it implies, and there’s a reason she wears it so perfectly now. If it feels a little “constructed” or faintly theatrical, that’s very much by design. Thank you for your comment!

9 Likes

I figured that within one second of reading the game description. :sweat_smile:

Hahaha, looks like I can’t hide it at all. Thank you for your comment and feedback!

3 Likes

I’m not an expert, but I think Egmont would be a plausible last name if she was a descendant of Dutch immigrants. (I think the game takes place in Manhattan?)

3 Likes

Haven’t played the game yet, and it’s got quite the intriguing premise so I’m already excited and invested------Just as a heads up though, since this is a game with a gender-locked Male Protag, you should be tagging that with your title for full transparency!

4 Likes

Done, thank you for the tip!

2 Likes

Egmont is also a Finnish publishing company (parent company is Danish), which made me look the title really weirdly :sweat_smile:

3 Likes

This is the opposite of how it comes across to Dutch people. Egmond Binnen started as a village for the poor, and Egmond aan Zee is a fishing village. They’re poor plebs, if anything.

3 Likes

Ah, I see! I’m not Dutch myself, so I genuinely didn’t know the modern association was more “fishing village” than “old aristocracy.” I was mostly thinking about the House of Egmond/Egmont family from the medieval Low Countries/Habsburg-era nobility, since that was the context I’d come across the name in before.

In my (ignorant, cough, cough) mind, it just registered as this old, vaguely aristocratic European surname that fit the tone I wanted for Vivienne’s world. I had no idea the actual villages carried such different associations locally. The protagonist’s reaction to it is also very much him seeing the name through this exaggerated luxury-fashion lens rather than actually knowing anything about Dutch history/place names.

Though now I kind of love the idea that a Dutch MC would hear “Egmont” and immediately go “wait, seriously?” while everyone else treats it like this impossibly glamorous name.

But thank you so much for explaining it to me! I always find this kind of cultural context really interesting. I’ll have to keep this in mind as I continue to write.

9 Likes

Really fun so far, very excited to see how it turns out. Playing an asshole MC and watching Clara immediately get icked is hilarious.

2 Likes

The decision to attribute connections made little sense to me. I don’t think I said anything remotely charming the whole time, often avoided it. Yet it was my third-highest attribute (albeit a distant third).

2 Likes

Hello, everyone! Thank you for all your feedback so far. I’ve changed a few of the stats and attributes that didn’t quite fit the choices well, and also included a couple more thousand words of content!

Chapter one is now complete, and the game (without code) is a little more than 10k words. I try to add a little more every day, so I’m not sure how the constant updates affect save files. If there are any mistakes or content you’d like me to add to this first chapter, let me know!

The MC should have met all of the ROs now, so I’m interested to hear your thoughts on these women. Thank you!

(Also.. I wasn’t aware posts couldn’t be edited after some time, so if mods could remove the outdated word count from my title, I would really appreciate it!)

9 Likes

Requesting @moderators to assist @bonbons with turning the original post into a wiki so that she can continue to edit it. Thank you.

@bonbons you can tag @ the moderators if you need their help in future.

6 Likes

Done!

4 Likes

Its fun so far, I love playing fish out of water stories where you get to prove yourself. With the ROs, is whether or not they will be romanceable set based on the first impression choice or will it be more open as it goes? I love defrosting ice queens, rivals to lovers and all the tumultuous romances so being able to start off disliking people, but changing as you get to know them is always a plus for me.

3 Likes

I’m glad you’re finding it fun so far! The ROs will always be romanceable as long as you have a certain stat percentage in coming chapters. Your first impression is just that— a first impression— and very likely to change as more of their personalities and backgrounds are revealed. Yes, there is very much an ice queen and tumultuous ROs.. Ah, also in the newest update, and coming ones, choosing to romance certain ROs will make other ROs’ opinions of you decrease.

SPOILER

Elise will be very much displeased and jealous if you like Vivienne romantically.

Who is your favorite so far?

9 Likes

So I know we’re a fish out of water but is there a way to have a MC that maybe is a bit into fashion? Like a guy who’s certainly not an expert but dips his toes in? We already have the totally new to fashion and doesn’t take it seriously story with Devil Wears Prada and don’t get me wrong I’m going to play an MC like that too but it might be refreshing to have a character who is a bit into it but this is still way out of his league.

3 Likes

You’re right, it’d add a nice extra flavor to have MCs that thought they were fashionable! It makes me think of the DWP’s movie scene with Andrea’s saying, “Well, um.. I think that depends on what you’re..” to Miranda’s, “You have no style or sense of fashion.”

I’ll try to incorporate some of that soon. Thank you for your comment!

5 Likes