Inhuman Resources: A Literary Machination

SMYRNACORP turns office work into a paranoid literary nightmare, framing its horror around an anachronistic company that seems to control truth as readily as payroll. Inhuman Resources: A Literary Machination plays like an interactive novel with the tension of a bureaucratic escape room, where every memo, coworker, and company policy may conceal another layer of cruelty. Its tone is grimly comic and unsettling rather than action-heavy, drawing fear from manipulation, surveillance, and the prospect of losing yourself to a job that demands everything. The central goal is simple in theory—survive the workday and get out—but the route there is anything but predictable.

Choices drive nearly every part of the experience, sending the narrative down one of hundreds of possible paths and toward several endings. Players build an employee profile by improving useful skills, collecting concealed items, and unlocking options that reveal alternative scenes or secret routes through the corporation. Progress often requires practical acts of corporate sabotage: accessing private files, altering recordings, breaking into vaults, solving cryptic riddles, or infiltrating a colleague’s computer without attracting the wrong attention. Conversations matter as much as puzzles, since alliances with unstable coworkers and responses to vicious management can reshape both immediate survival and the wider story.

What separates it from a standard visual novel is its attempt to make reading feel like active investigative work, blending branching fiction with light RPG progression and interactive problem-solving. The corporate setting gives its surreal horror a recognizable edge, turning everyday workplace language into a weapon and making even routine assignments feel threatening. Additional short fiction from Canadian writers expands the setting beyond the main storyline, while English and French localization makes its dense text accessible to more players. Fans of Choice of Games-style branching narratives, Black Mirror’s corporate dread, or puzzle-forward interactive fiction should find plenty to unravel, especially if they enjoy replaying stories to expose every hidden consequence.