The Directorate

THE DIRECTORATE is a text-based spy thriller played through a classified workstation. No combat, no reflex tests: you read messages, weigh what you know, and decide. Then you sign the cover story, and the record remembers whether it holds. It opens on the last night of the operator whose seat you're about to take: Ashgabat, 3 a.m., a car behind him and a handler on the line. Then the terminal is yours. Three rotations, fifteen files, from Tbilisi and Mombasa to Istanbul, Beirut, Geneva, Lisbon and Valletta. Every file has several endings, and the story remembers what you did across all three rotations. Exposure only goes up. Stay GREY and the quiet options stay open. Get WATCHED and nobody takes your calls. Intelligence is your budget. Buy a drone, an intercept or a bribe from your fixer, or do the work yourself and spend time instead. The clock is running. Wait too long and someone else's plan wins. Hands-on work. Tag clues in surveillance photos, run plates and names at the command line, plan routes on the map, and play what you know as cards. Watch for contacts who aren't who they say. Sign the cover story. Build the account yourself. If it contradicts what you did, the record says so. Quiet, atmospheric sound, with a mute in the dock. Each rotation takes about an hour, and progress saves automatically in your browser.