Permaban

It's 2007. You're an unpaid moderator on a dying internet forum.

Inspired by Papers, Please, Permaban is a forum moderation game about interpreting rules, making judgment calls, and dealing with people who hate your decisions.

A user wants to know who has the leaked build. Someone found the admin's old profile page and is asking whether to post it. A member since day one says the new rules are garbage, in those words. The spam bot might actually be a real person.

Every ban needs a rule citation, and every tool has its own price. Moderate too hard and the regulars stop posting. Moderate too soft and the board drowns in raids, scams and flame wars.

Nothing in a shift is on a clock. No timer, no post that rots if you leave it. The queue waits while you decide.

Between shifts, the people you banned come back to argue, the other mods ask for favours and remember your answer, and the admins rewrite the rulebook under you.

And the forum is only one window. The machine boots cold, POST beep and all, into a desktop you can actually use: a browser, a media player with a real playlist, a paint program, and if you open the wrong file, an archiver that will not stop asking you to buy it. Almost none of it is required, and almost all of it is hiding something. Numbers the calculator was never meant to take. Archives nobody asked you to open. A Flash game portal that one night becomes the job. The forum is where you work. The desktop is where the game keeps its secrets.

Features

• Moderate forum posts
• Ban, warn, censor, investigate, scan a link, lock the thread, IP ban, or nuke. Or leave it alone, which is also a call
• Cite the correct rule every time you ban, warn or IP ban
• Every tool has its own price, and skipping straight to the ban button is not free
• No timer on a campaign shift. The queue waits while you decide
• Answer ban appeals between shifts, with the original post as your only evidence
• A break room where the other mods ask for favours, and remember your answer
• Deal with contradictory moderation policies
• Track ban evaders and sockpuppets
• A spam filter that barely knows what spam is
• Keep your job: one bad shift and the admins notice
• Read DMs, forum drama, and user complaints
• A whole 2007 desktop to hide in: a browser, a media player, a paint program, a file explorer, a calculator
• Endless mode with escalating chaos, and a break every twenty posts or six minutes, whichever lands first
• Auto-save between campaign shifts, so a campaign survives you closing the game

Includes

• 700+ handmade forum posts
• 28 achievements
• A soundtrack you queue up yourself in a period media player
• Multiple board themes inspired by classic forums
• Three playable games buried in the machine, and one night when beating one of them is the job
• Recurring users and moderator drama
• Retro desktop sounds, boot screen included
• And way too many easter eggs...

Before you buy

This is a reading game, and it is all in English: 2007 forum English, typos and slang included. The answer is in the text, so skimming, or fighting the language, turns the whole thing into noise.

It is also a period piece. One specific corner of the internet, rendered from memory: if you were on a forum in 2007, half of this will feel like a room you used to live in. If you were not, it still works, but the game never leaves that year.

A campaign runs about 40-80 minutes, longer if you stop to read everything and poke at the desktop. Endless mode is where the rest of the hours are. Nothing here is a forty hour game.

The posts include harassment, threats, people trying to expose each other, and users being plainly cruel, because that is the material the job is made of.

This game is for you if:

• You read the whole thread before picking a side
• You were on a forum in 2007, or want to know what that was like
• Poking at a fake operating system until it gives something up sounds like a good night

It is probably not for you if:

• You want action, or any pressure faster than a hard decision
• You measure a purchase in hours of content
• 2007 internet drama sounds exhausting rather than funny