North Bay Protocol

A protocol is born at the centre of a crisis. Ever since, everyone has been interpreting it. North Bay Protocol is a single-player narrative strategy game about AI governance. Respond to crises, allocate limited resources, and face the delayed consequences of your decisions across three connected chapters. There are no perfect answers, and every compromise changes the future North Bay will leave behind. North Bay is placing more and more public decisions in the hands of an efficient, stable, and seemingly objective AI governance system. Its institutions are still functioning, but the consequences are beginning to drift beyond their original human intentions. Read reports, respond to unfolding events, allocate limited resources, and choose between conflicting objectives. A decision does not end when you press a button. Weeks later, it may return as a debt settlement, a chained crisis, a public reaction, or an entry permanently preserved in the city’s records. CORE GAMEPLAY • Read event reports and narrative material to understand each crisis and the interests involved • Choose between different responses, each carrying its own resource and institutional costs • Manage conditions such as capacity, trust, and adaptation to prevent the system from collapsing • Face delayed consequences, debt settlements, and event chains created by earlier decisions • Decide which risks are acceptable when not every objective can be satisfied THREE COMPLETE CHAPTERS Chapter One: Crisis Response Keep the system operating while dealing with escalating emergencies, closed procurement meetings, resource constraints, and accumulated debt. A solution that works today may create a much greater cost several weeks later. Chapter Two: City Echoes See how institutional decisions enter the lives of ordinary people. As the system begins to interpret, predict, and shape human behaviour, you must reconsider the boundaries between efficiency, order, and individual experience. Chapter Three: Public Record Face the final consequences created by your previous decisions. What is preserved, reinterpreted, or erased will determine the official story North Bay leaves behind. KEY FEATURES • A single-player narrative strategy experience containing three complete chapters • Different interfaces, pacing, and decision structures in each chapter • Delayed consequences, debt settlements, and branching event chains • Randomised event combinations that create variation between playthroughs • Multiple endings and hidden outcomes • A higher score does not necessarily mean a better result • A complete playthrough usually takes around three hours, depending on reading speed and choices • Distinct atmospheric music and visual presentation for each chapter • Steam Achievements and Steam Cloud support North Bay Protocol is not a traditional action game or city builder. It is a text-driven interactive narrative built around institutional choices and systemic consequences. You cannot solve every problem. You can only decide which costs are acceptable—and who will eventually bear them.