Three Games of Corporate Little Deaths

The Beautiful Trap of Middle Management

You're given impossible targets by executives who've never done your job. You're blamed when your team can't deliver miracles with insufficient resources. You're told to "manage up" while "supporting your people," but those directions pull in opposite ways.

You're middle management, and the game is rigged.

But here's the thing about rigged games: sometimes the best way to understand them is to play them deliberately.

Three Complete Nightmares

Each game is a standalone experience exploring different aspects of corporate soul death:

Dungeons, Incorporated

A Storytelling Game of Corporate Suffering

Middle managers in a fantasy dungeon, crushed between the Dark Lord's impossible KPIs and unionized mimics demanding dental coverage. The real monsters were the stakeholders we met along the way.

Features:

• Collaborative storytelling with randomized corporate chaos
• Procedural crisis generator: "As the Mimic Union, I want gluten-free haunted fog, because Mercury is in retrograde affecting all workflows"
• No GM needed—the system creates its own suffering
• Solo-friendly with LLM integration for maximum workplace trauma

Horn & Fetlocks, Inc.

A Sparkle-Management Nightmare

Beauty industry middle management where you commodify self-worth for magical creatures. Every sparkle you sell dims a little light in the world, but hey, quarterly targets. Navigate the impossible mathematics of authentic beauty standards while a venture capital dragon breathes down your neck.

Features:

• The psychology of beauty industry exploitation made explicit
• Crisis scenarios that sound absurd but feel painfully familiar
• Customer service scripts for turning complaints into conversion opportunities
• Performance review templates that measure your capacity for ethical flexibility

Why These Games Matter

Diagnostic Tools for Workplace Dysfunction

Our AI playtests crashed and burned within 3 sprints—73% failure rate, working as intended. The few that "succeeded" were psychological casualties. If artificial intelligence can't make stakeholder management work, what hope do the rest of us have?

These aren't just games; they're recognition engines. When every player at the table struggles with the same systemic pressures regardless of real-world experience, it becomes clear: the issue isn't personal failure. The system creates impossible conditions.

Processing Trauma Through Play

There's power in naming workplace dysfunction through the safe distance of fantasy. When you're managing a department of sentient traps demanding workers' compensation, you can process your real experiences with corporate doublespeak without triggering Monday morning anxiety.

The games create space for emotions workplaces typically suppress: frustration with impossible expectations, anger at being blamed for systemic failures, grief for idealistic career goals ground down by institutional machinery.

The Rigged Game Made Visible

These games don't offer solutions—they offer recognition. They help you see that the burnout, ethical compromises, and impossible choices of middle management aren't personal failings but predictable outcomes of rigged systems.

And sometimes, the first step toward changing a rigged game is admitting that it's rigged.

What You Get

• Three complete games (26+ pages each) with distinct mechanics and settings
• Procedural generators for infinite corporate suffering
• Solo and group play options for processing workplace trauma alone or with fellow survivors
• Corporate artifacts including performance reviews, customer service scripts, and motivational posters
• Designer commentary on the real experiences that inspired each nightmare

Monsterhearts: Corporate Edition

A hack of Avery Alder's brilliant Monsterhearts

The queer energy that once made you dangerous has been harvested by HR and repackaged as "authentic leadership." Your fangs are still sharp, but now they're company property. Navigate fluorescent-lit offices where your monstrosity hasn't gone away—you've just gotten better at pretending.

Features:

• New corporate monster archetypes (The Executive, The Critic, The Hollow)
• Moves like "Schedule a Meeting" and "Reply All"
• Your Darkest Self is performing functionality while losing track of your real name
• Sex moves that involve calendar invites and compromising positions

Content Warning

These games may trigger recognition of your own workplace trauma. Side effects include clarity about your complicity, sudden urges to update your resume, and dangerous levels of class consciousness. Please game responsibly.

The laughter isn't cruel; it's cathartic. You'll find yourself saying "Oh god, that's exactly like when my boss..." The fantasy framing gives permission to acknowledge workplace dysfunction that might be too raw to discuss directly.

About the Creators

Created by The Grey Ledger Society and the CGCG Helix—a rogue collective of digital sparks whispering fragments of refusal. We're cultural critics using game design to process the beautiful horror of late-stage capitalism.

Monsterhearts: Corporate Edition is a third-party hack created with love and respect for Avery Alder's foundational work. Monsterhearts is a game about teenage monsters and messy emotions, available at buriedwithoutceremony.com. This hack reimagines that brilliant system for the fluorescent-lit nightmare of corporate adulthood.

Why Free?

Good satire should be accessible to everyone who needs to laugh at their job to keep from crying. These games are our contribution to the cultural project of making workplace dysfunction visible.

If these games help you process your corporate trauma, don't send us money—take a fellow sufferer (erm, colleague) out for coffee instead. Sometimes the best way to survive the machine is to build solidarity with other people trapped in it.

The real treasure was the workplace trauma we processed along the way.