Bureaucracy (video game)
1987 interactive fiction computer game
Bureaucracy is an interactive fiction video game released by Infocom in 1987, scripted by comic science fiction author Douglas Adams. Infocom's twenty-fourth game, it is part of the Infocom Plus range which requires a machine with a minimum of 128K of memory.
Plot
The player must confront a long and complicated series of bureaucratic hurdles resulting from a recent change of address. Mail is being delivered to the wrong address, bank accounts are inaccessible, and nothing is as it should be. The game includes a measure of simulated blood pressure which rises when "frustrating" events happen and lowers after a period of no annoying events. Once a certain blood pressure level is reached, the player suffers an aneurysm and the game ends.
While undertaking the seemingly simple task of retrieving misdirected mail, the player encounters a number of bizarre characters, including an antisocial hacker, a paranoid weapons enthusiast, and a tribe of Zalagasan cannibals. At the same time, the player must deal with impersonal corporations, counterintuitive airport logic, and a hungry llama.
Gameplay
Infocom rated Bureaucracy as "Advanced" in its difficulty rating system.
The game begins with a short online "software registration form" displayed on the screen.
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This entry incorporates text from “Bureaucracy (video game)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.