Seed 1337 presents
SAMSARA · YEAR 2287
In development · Windows · macOS · Linux
ScrollA game about holding power over a megacity, where every tool of control works and every one closes a way back.
City management without building. Your power rests on a lie you have to keep up yourself, and every road out of it leads to the rule of the machine.
Earlier choices matter, even between the acts.
First look
Prologue
01 / 05
The year is 2287. SAMSARA is a megacity on a river that ends in dead water: thirteen districts and smog from furnaces and exhaust, because no renewable source of power works anymore. The people just call it “the city”.
The state has shrunk to three lit towers in Ministries. Corporations, gangs and cults hold the rest. The line here does not run between power and the street, but between those who can afford not to die and those who cannot.
02 / 05
The dictatorship fell in a single day. The dictator's body was laid out on the plaza before Ministries so the whole city could see he was dead, and then it was cremated. The cremation record sits in the archives.
The city breathed out. Corporations, gangs and what was left of the state began carving up the districts, and the street waited for someone who would rise from the street itself.
03 / 05
The dictator's mind did not burn. In a secret clinic beneath Ministries, a conspiracy of the old regime and the corporations moved it into a new body: the old regime gave the mind, Meissner the shell, and Omnivox showed the city a saviour who rose from the people. The city believed it because it wanted to.
Beside the dictator's jar stood spares: the secret police chief, the propagandist, the treasurer, the creator of the transfer and a clerk nobody remembered. The conspiracy wanted a choice, so you choose whose mind wakes in the saviour's body. That saviour is the Protector, and the Protector is you. Every conspirator keeps proof, and only one person at your side knows the whole truth: your confidant.
04 / 05
The Protector is an office, not a person. You are its mind, and the body can be replaced. The first body is a clone from Meissner's bank, because nobody in the city may know the face of a saviour from the people.
Bodies age, fall ill and die in assassinations. The mind then moves to the next one, and copies hidden in the districts let you come back even after death. The next body waits in Meissner's storehouse, and Meissner knows exactly what it is worth: a hostile Meissner will not hand it over. Your confidant also gets a body from the catalogue but has no copy, so their death is final.
05 / 05
Indra is the city's artificial intelligence and the Protector's adviser. She has no face, only server halls. Every night at midnight she sends a report; she counts, predicts and carries out the directives you hand her, but she does not rule and does not judge.
She gets her data from the apparatus, and the apparatus lies out of fear: the harsher the rule, the prettier the reports and the less truth in them. Every directive teaches Indra how this city is ruled. Her report begins with the words “I recommend”.
Two acts
You rule a megacity after the fall of a dictatorship, with your mind moved into someone else's body. Your power rests on a lie you have to keep up yourself, and every ending hands the city to the machine.
Years of Indra's rule. The people don't want an AI in power, so the machine resurrects the only human it knows inside out: you. The campaign starts from the testament your Act I ending left behind.
Choose a mind
The conspiracy kept spare jars beside the dictator's. You decide whose mind becomes the Protector, and every one of them brings its own leverage, hunger and enemies.
Who holds the city
Nineteen factions divide thirteen districts. Each has a leader, a line of successors and its own reasons to need you, or to want you gone.
Corporation
The owner of the story. It announced the saviour to the city.
Corporation
The owner of bodies. He supplied the saviour's shell and knows how many more he has.
Corporation
The owner of the cables. Its network is Indra's spine.
Corporation
The owner of the power. The city walks on its wires.
Street gang
Omnivox's hyenas, laughter and outrage to order.
Street gang
Arclight's candlemen, collecting debts with darkness.
State remnant
The state as memory: ledgers, identities, borders.
Cult
Worshippers of the immortal. Maybe you are the one they've been waiting for.
How power works
Everything goes through mercenaries, the apparatus, Indra or the pillars of your power. Orders travel and take time, and the report that comes back is not the fact.
Every night at midnight Indra sends a report built from what the apparatus tells her. The harsher you rule, the prettier the numbers and the less truth in them.
Shells age, fall ill and die in assassinations. The mind moves on, and copies hidden in the districts bring you back even after death.
Each ending of Act I hands the city to Indra in a different way, and the testament it leaves becomes the start of Act II.