The Case of Bad Bureaucracy

About the game

The Case of Bad Bureaucracy is a short, cosy point-and-click mystery with a time loop in it. You play Aster, a young woman with a pink ponytail who has just arrived in a modern fantasy world to start an apprenticeship, and who has a knack for helping people with problems that cannot be solved by shouting at a form. The first case is as small as can be: return some library books. It does not stay small.

Every case is a handful of hand-drawn pixel-art places, such as a library with a very large flower, a village square, a lighthouse, a diner with a tea machine and a government office with a purple carpet, and a cast of oddball characters to talk to: a very large orc, an elf reading a book at the reception desk and an older mage with a laptop. You look at things, pick them up, drag them onto other things and onto people, and keep what you learn in a notebook. The time loop lets you try again with what you now know, and the puzzles reward noticing rather than guessing. One of them has you piecing a torn piece of paper back together on a desk. As the title promises, the enemy is red tape, and the weapon is direct action.

It was made by Wandering Door Games, who sell it on other stores and publish the source for everyone to read, and this page offers that free source version under a neutral name.

Playing it here

Click Play and wait a moment while the game loads (about 37 MB, downloaded only when you press the button). Click inside the game once so that it receives the keyboard. Choose Play in the menu and follow the dialogue: Enter moves it on. The game is saved in this browser, so you can close the page and continue later. The Settings menu has volume, text and accessibility options. The game has no Quit button here, because a web page cannot close itself.

Controls

Tips

Look at everything. Most objects have a short comment, and some comments are clues for another scene.

Use the notebook. The journal collects what Aster knows, and combining two bits of knowledge is a way to ask a better question.

Talk twice. Characters often say something new once you have learned something elsewhere.

Take your time. It is a game for looking around and thinking, not for reflexes.

FAQ

Why is it called The Case of Bad Bureaucracy? The studio reserves the original title and logo, so this version shows a neutral name. The character is still called Aster, and the story is unchanged.

Does it work on a phone? It is made for a mouse and keyboard, so it is best on a computer.

Is it free to share? Yes. The code is under the GNU Affero GPL, the artwork under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0, and the music, sounds and fonts are credited below.

Credits and licence

This game is by Wandering Door Games. The code is under the GNU Affero General Public License v3 or later and the original artwork under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0. The game runs on Godot Engine 4.7.2 (MIT).

• Art "Input Prompts" and "Pixel Cursor Pack" by Kenney, CC0.
• Music "A Small Fire Will Do (Calming Loop)" by Cal McEachern, "Napping on a Cloud" by congusbongus, "Where was I?" by yd, and loops by Abstraction (tallbeard), all CC0.
• Sound effects by rubberduck, qubodup, Kenney and wubitog, CC0.
• Fonts "Aika Bold", "League Gothic" and "Miniver", SIL Open Font License 1.1.

Changes in this version: exported for the web; without the reserved project name, the title artwork, the logos and the icons (the title is plain text); the Steam integration replaced by an empty stub; without the store, web-page and folder links; and with the renderer set to the one the web supports. The licence texts, the complete source and the build scripts are linked from this page.