The Museum of Perfect Crimes

The narrator has opened his own house as a museum of drug history. Guests come in by the front door and leave through the gift shop; his housekeeper leaves by the kitchen door. You decide what stands on each side of the velvet rope and what the labels say. The visitors decide what they believe.

You play the narrator of the books: a rich, bored man who pays less tax than his housekeeper and keeps two unopened letters under a bowl on the sideboard. Rosa dusts on Tuesdays and reads one label aloud. Chad audits on Thursdays with his red pen and his shredder. The Polo, a patron in a salmon polo, pledges money while he is charmed, and the Editor looks behind every pillar. Four wings hold the four books, each in its own colour.

Each room starts with a crate of five closed objects, and each one talks back: a wooden chest in a top hat says, "When I do it, apparently it's an empire." Hang three to five on plinths in front of the rope, where visitors read every word, or behind it, where most only skim. Place the one lamp that draws the crowd, and give each exhibit a caption card: a flattering costume line, a plain dated stamp line, or a cross line. Then open the doors. Every visitor follows one visible rule: the Night Class reads only the first exhibit, the Sister only the public side, and the Editor reads everything and mails a correction for every myth. Each leaves with a receipt, and three meters move: Hype, Insight and Fallout.

The one new verb is side by side. Hang two exhibits facing each other across the rope and they form a pair with one joint label, the joke that is also the truth: the poppy pod across from the chest in its top hat. A room of true labels nobody reads still fails, and every myth costs Fallout, so the puzzle is giving each visitor something true to carry home without losing the crowd.

The first release has twenty rooms, five in each wing, at 8 to 12 minutes a room and four to six hours in all. Each wing ends on one of five endings, from Chemist to Snake oil, and a losing ending never stops the tour. The gift shop pitches souvenirs after every opening, and a finale waits behind the two letters on the sideboard. It is a single-player game.

Rehang any finished room to complete its three commissions, collect twenty Case Files and every wing ending, and spend the museum's takings on fixtures such as a vitrine or an audio guide. The same layout always gives the same receipts, and nothing is timed or decays while you are away.

Based on The Chemical Divide, four darkly satirical books about drugs, money and unequal access: High and Wired, The Cartel Ledger, The White Coat and The Synthetic Age. The game keeps the books' promise: a tour, never a kit. Exhibits are closed objects, no method, quantity or route appears anywhere, and nobody holds, buys or takes a drug. Every person, company and court case is a fictional stand-in, and the joke always punches up. Satire inspired by documented history. A fictional narrator. Fictional exhibits.

The Museum of Perfect Crimes is a complete game design for PC. Development has not started. A phone edition may follow.