Prowlers Shift

You took the job because it was quiet. Night guard at The Archive — a private museum owned by people who don't answer questions. The guard before you left in the middle of a sentence. Nobody will say his name.

Prowlers Shift is a 2.5D narrative surveillance simulation. Every shift you patrol a cutaway museum full of people who all want something from you — a favor, your silence, a look the other way. What you overhear, what you notice, and who you decide to trust quietly reshapes the nights that follow.

A shift, minute to minute

The museum is alive around you. Visitors drift in, staff work their rounds, and after closing the building empties into something stranger. Your tools are simple; the pressure comes from how you use them:

• Listen. Put your ear to a door and catch what is said when people think no one can hear. A voice carrying through a door is worth more than any face.
  
• Observe. Watch the people around you — where they go, who they meet, what they repeat. Seeing something once means nothing. Seeing it again is a pattern.
  
• Search. Open drawers, lockers, ticket stubs and archive shelves. Evidence is physical — the kind of small detail that only matters once you notice it more than once.
  
• Handle the bags. Unattended cases can be opened, but the zipper makes noise, and the faster you pull it the louder it gets. A noise meter rises with your speed; if someone is close enough to hear, you get caught. Patience is the whole skill.
  
• Take the jobs. Everyone in the building needs something — an errand, a delivery, a favor they can't ask out loud. Do their work and doors open to you; but every job puts you in someone's debt.
  
• Trade. Money is tight. Buy from the museum's licensed vendor, or slip the black-market dealer something he shouldn't have. The shelf changes as the days pass; what you couldn't afford before might be gone by the time you can.

Decide who to trust

Some people lie. Some exaggerate. Some are telling the truth and no one believes them. Every shift you choose in the moment — whose story to act on, whose secret to keep, who to expose and who to protect. Your employer quietly tells you what to ignore; whether you listen is your call. Trust the wrong person and it follows you.

People who remember

Every character reacts to how you have treated them. Help the cook and he covers for you; turn on him and the kitchen closes to you for good. Favors, grudges, debts and rumors carry forward — someone you cross early will still be cold on you long after. Your standing with the museum and the suspicion you have drawn both rise and fall with your choices, opening some doors and quietly locking others.

What is really going on

Piece by piece, small things stop adding up: a gap in a schedule, a name that keeps getting left off, a corridor busier than it should be. The game never states the answer out loud — you assemble it yourself, from what you chose to see and hear. How it ends is yours to decide, and there is more than one ending.

Features

• A hand-authored mystery that unfolds night after night, not a random generator
  
• Listen at doors and observe a museum that behaves whether you are paying attention or not
  
• Moment-to-moment choices: whose story to act on, who to trust, what to reveal and what to bury
  
• Daily directives from your employer that tell you what to overlook
  
• Physical evidence found by searching furniture, lockers, archives and ticket records
  
• A tense bag-search and noise-meter mechanic where speed is the risk
  
• Side jobs for everyone in the building, and two economies: a licensed vendor and a black-market dealer with stock that changes over time
  
• Reputation and suspicion systems, and NPCs with lasting memory of how you treated them
  
• More than one ending, shaped by what you uncovered and the people you chose to trust
  
• Fully localized in 8 languages: English, Turkish, German, French, Spanish, Russian, Arabic, and Simplified Chinese

Listen carefully. Watch who you trust. Someone is always keeping score.