Planned Release Date: 2027

About This Game

A spell scroll does what its rune says for whoever reads it. For centuries they were rare, often the work of masters long dead, pulled from the wrecks or sold at auctions.

Then came advances in arcane calligraphy, and anyone with a steady hand could learn to draw their own. Last month, one meant to warm a dairy barn burned it down to the ground instead, with the herd inside.

The county has now opened the Rune Bureau. No scroll may be read until a clerk has licensed it.

On Monday, October 7, 1907, you take your seat at Desk Fourteen.

The Work

Each case arrives as a sealed scroll and any of its necessary paperwork. Break the seal and read the scroll. The ink colour tells you the school of magic, its strokes the direction, its symmetry the target and its frame how long it lasts. Then check the petition against it, and then against the manual or any memos.

When you've decided, lift a lid and post the scroll down one of three holes to Approve, Reject or Confiscate them.

The Rules

Every new grade brings an expanded manual with more things to check. And some mornings, the bureau will issue memos that override what the manual says.

The Consequences

Every evening the paper tells you what happened in town and some of it will be your doing. Some petitioners will ask you to bend the rules for them, will you?

Features

• 28 days at the Intake Hall, with over 300 petitions to license.

• Six grades of work, each with its own expanded manual.

• A rune system you'll quickly be intuitive at reading.

• Story cases woven through procedurally generated ones, so no two playthroughs are the same.

• A new front page on the newspaper every night, that shifts based on your choices.

• An ending that shifts depending on how you handled the scrolls that came through your desk.

• Hand-crafted pixel art.