Bureaucracy

From thecrankyhermit

Bureaucracy
Companies Infocom
First release date Feb 12, 1987
Original platform(s) DOS
Optimization notes Z-Machine

Interactive fiction

Bureaucracy
Douglas Adams' second Infocom IF is a joke game, but it's a good joke. You're an average Joe moving to a new neighborhood facing hurdles of red tape - mail delivered to the wrong address, bank account frozen, etc. Your attempts to navigate the bureaucracy and fix your life are thwarted in increasingly surreal ways, and solved with even more surreal solutions. In true Adams' style, Bureaucracy is consistently illogical. Its twisted puzzles will test the most seasoned IF players and seem random and unfair to everyone else. A mandatory, fourth-wall breaking "software registration form" at the beginning of the game will glitch, give contradictory instructions, and generally sets the tone for the rest of the game, and the information you provide will be used against you! As with other Infocom games, the manual and "feelies" are a big part of the game experience, the highlights being a Popular Paranoia tabloid, and a credit card application form, in carbon copy triplicate, with different and increasingly absurd/threatening questions on each carbon copy form.
Key people Douglas Adams