You are a government enforcement supervisor.
Your boss wants numbers. The public is watching your optics.
Every morning you get three event cards. Every choice is wrong.
DIRECTIVE 7-B: SUPERVISORS ARE REMINDED THAT ████████████████
AND THAT PERSONAL DISCOMFORT IS NOT GROUNDS FOR █████████
BICE is a darkly satirical browser game about bureaucratic complicity. You play a mid-level supervisor at a fictional federal enforcement agency, working a five-day week where every morning delivers three event cards — each a small, tidy request for your sign-off.
An anonymous tip about apartment 4B. A compliance sweep during the lunch rush. A courthouse corridor at 3:10 PM when the defendants pass security. The requests are mundane. The consequences accumulate in a sidebar called the Collateral Log, filling line by line with things the official reports will not mention.
"Riverview Elementary logged a guardian absence for Student #79214."
Two meters compete for your attention: QUOTA — what your director needs to see on Friday — and OPTICS — what the local news is filming. Push too hard on numbers and the cameras notice. Play it safe and HR sends a memo. Neither path leads anywhere clean.
Each day ends with an expense report you must certify: that today's activities were necessary and proportionate. The checkbox is right there. Approval is expected by end of business.
OPERATIONAL BRIEFING — FOR NEW SUPERVISORS ONLY
Each morning surfaces a new enforcement scenario — an anonymous tip, a workplace audit request, a hospital lobby inquiry. The language is professional. The framing is neutral. Nothing about this looks wrong on paper.
Aggressive enforcement. Quiet compliance. Strategic deflection. Every option has a cost. Collateral effects appear in the log instantly — not as punishment, but as record. The system notes what happened. It always does.
After each action, you must select a public narrative: Safety. Community. Integrity. The system reveals the contradiction hidden inside your chosen frame. The log updates. The collateral log doesn't care what you called it.
Every day closes with an expense report. You must certify that today's activities were necessary and proportionate. Declining costs you optics. Signing costs something harder to name. The checkbox is right there.
Your director watches the numbers. The cameras watch the numbers too, differently. The tension between these two audiences is the game. There is no configuration that satisfies both for long.
Five days. Fifteen actions. One meritorious service award, draggable, gold-embossed. Pull it away to see what the week actually produced. The vignettes are short. They are not from your perspective.
Push QUOTA and OPTICS degrades. Protect OPTICS and your director emails HR.
Neither ending is labeled "good." Every choice has a cost. Every order has a consequence.
Incoming incident — Day 2 of 5 — Action 1 of 3
INCIDENT #0014-GRA | THEME: MILESTONE_DISRUPTION | PRIORITY: ROUTINE
BICE is a game that makes you uncomfortable on purpose. The point is not that enforcement is mundane — it's that the mundane is how it sustains itself. Forms. Memos. Quotas. PR frames. Expense certifications. The bureaucracy requires your signature because your signature is the point.
The choices in BICE are not presented as heroic or easy. There is no "correct" path. Every option — aggressive, cautious, or passive — produces collateral entries in the log. The game does not reward you for being a good person. It shows you what the system does with every kind of person it processes.
The cards — anonymous tips, school bus intercepts, courthouse sweeps, hospital lobby checks — are composites drawn from documented enforcement patterns. The numbers in the invoice items are in the right neighborhood. The vignettes at the end of the week are the kind of thing that appears in case notes, not press releases.
This is satire in the tradition of Papers, Please and Orwell — games that put you inside a system to show you how systems work on the people caught inside them. The discomfort is the argument. The collateral log is the argument. The checkbox at the end of the day is the argument.
CURRENT STATUS — BUILD 0.4 — NOT YET RELEASED
The core card system and consequence engine are complete. All fifteen event cards are written and tuned. The Collateral Log, the expense certification mechanic, and all three endings are implemented.
Build Status — Playable Prototype
The game has been playtested with a small group. The interactive card demo above reflects the live build. No press coverage has been published. This page is a design preview.
Playtesting — Ongoing
Designed in the tradition of Papers, Please and Orwell — games that use procedural mechanics to make an argument rather than a speech. The discomfort is deliberate. The checkbox is the point.
Design Intent
Three cards a day. Two meters. Five days. One expense report to certify at close of business each Friday.
Numbers matter. Optics matter more. Submit your week by Friday.
Free to play in any modern browser. No login required. No data collected.
Approximately 10–30 minutes per playthrough. Three possible endings —
none of which will make you feel good about the week you had.
BICE is an independent satirical game. It is not affiliated with any government agency.
All scenarios are fictional. The collateral log is not.