STAMP DUTY: PAPERWORK ROGUELITE

Vantrell Mutual, Claims Intake, 7th floor, 1994. You're a clerk on probation. Forms keep dropping onto your desk, and you get half a second to size up each one: by its silhouette, its color and one tiny mark. Left click approves. Right click denies. The space bar is locked by HR until your career says otherwise. Nobody here is joking. The absurd is just company policy.

Every form has a spot to check and a way it's supposed to look. A medical claim has an upright cross and a live heartbeat line. A police report has an intact gold seal. A leave application carries a photo of the employee: not a clown, not an alien, not a cat. On a forgery, one detail is always off, and the verdict is never written anywhere on the page. A wrong stamp is a strike. A form that expires on your desk is a strike. Rack up enough strikes and your probation is concluded.

Some paperwork matters more than you do. VIP forms pay double and give you half the time. Burning forms pay double and give you a third. On Friday the lights start to flicker. On Saturday the forms stop being the color they are.

Three currencies, each on its own schedule. KPI comes from correct stamps and combos, gets spent on artifacts in the run store, and burns off when the store closes. Cash arrives as one paycheck per shift and feeds the breakroom vending machine for the rest of the week. Shares are yours forever and go into the career tree.

A run is one week. Monday is induction. Tuesday brings VIP forms. Wednesday is a surprise audit, with the inspector's clipboard parked on a corner of your desk. On Thursday, forms arrive in pairs. Friday is quarter close. Saturday is voluntary overtime, and the paperwork goes into orbit. On Sunday the Board of Directors attends in person: three acts, contracts stamped on the beat, and separation notices with your name on them. Missing a daily quota isn't fatal; it costs you a strike tomorrow. Missing Sunday's is.

From Tuesday on, an internal memorandum lands on your desk before every shift, and you can't start work until you sign it. Every option is a trade, worded as policy: a lower quota for shorter timers, cash today for higher prices tomorrow. Some signatures stay in your file, and the correspondence carries on from week to week: a note in the drawer from the previous occupant, of whom HR has no record; an inspector who rates the clipboard on a scale of one to one; a vending machine that has requested a transfer to the lobby.

The first node of the career tree unlocks the space bar. After that come four emergency protocols, equipped one at a time: the desk slam, the hydraulic press, the general stamp and the event horizon. Twenty-four nodes across four branches, from union representation to a mechanical intern who stamps the oldest form on your desk.

A permanent contract unlocks the next level of Ascension. There are twenty. Each one shortens every timer, and some add a new clause of company policy. Previous terms stay in force.

• Seven form types and fourteen kinds of forgery, read by shape and color, never by text

• Nine artifacts in the run store, three tiers each, plus a vending machine stocked with snacks, relics and blueprints

• 32 internal memoranda, with story threads that carry over from week to week

• A 24-node career tree and four emergency protocols for the space bar

• 20 levels of Ascension and three endings, one of which isn't in the handbook

• Accessibility: form marks that identify every type without relying on color, relaxed timers, reduced motion, color vision filters, sound captions and rebindable keys

• English, Ukrainian and Simplified Chinese

• Steam Achievements and Steam Cloud saves

Coverage does not lapse. It is extended.