Project Madison
**This game uses keyboard controls**
The Game
In Project Madison, play a disgruntled 1960s secretary determined to enact revenge on Jeff, her nemesis. Use the environment and your work relationships to get Jeff fired from his cushy job!
During the day explore, spy on desks and hidden objects, make friends, and get in the boss’ good books by doing all your work. During the night use your limited time for mischief: stealing, breaking locks, or destroying important documents.
Jeff’s got it coming, and it’s up to YOU to decide how!
This game is for players who:
- Enjoy gameplay revolving around choices and consequences
- Enjoy replaying games or levels to explore different options
- Enjoy systems-driven narrative
- Enjoy expositional world-building through narrative design (world, dialogue, set pieces)
- Enjoy character-driven interactions and trust/friendship levels.
The Team
This game was made in collaboration with Taylor Adams-Harriott ✨:
- My roles: Narrative Design, co-Game Design, Additional Programming (NPC dialogue, basic AI).
- Taylor's roles: Art & UI Design, co-Game Design, Principal Programming (core gameplay, UI).
We enjoyed making this game and sincerely hope you will enjoy playing it. :-)
Download
Development log
- Project Madison Featured on Rock Paper ShotgunJun 22, 2019
Comments
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Hi, I want to ask about how to save game progress? Thank you !
Hello! There is currently no way to save progress in this version sorry, although this is on the list for v2. We hope you can still enjoy the game (and get Jeff!) :)
Hi, I'd like to volunteer to translate your game from English into Brazilian Portuguese.
Thanks for your kind offer! We're not currently looking into translations but when we do it would be wonderful to have a Brazilian Portuguese version of the game. Noted for the future :)
Was excited to play it but can't seem to get through the intro without it crashing. The furthest I can make it to is the 'play menu' where it says please wait; the game never loads and when I press play the game crashes. A shame!
Edit: got it to work in browser, great game 10/10 recommend for a quick but enjoyable distraction <3
Oh no, I'm sorry to hear you had this bug! :( Was it on both browser and download? I haven't come across that one before (the game is a few years old now so I wonder if there are some browser compatibility issues now 🤔)
I downloaded it for mac through the itch.io app. However, I did manage to play it through the browser in the end; it was a lot of fun! Thank you so much for the response, the game was really cute and engaging <3
Oh I'm really glad to hear that! 🙌 Great that you could play and that you enjoyed the game - thank you for your kind words! :) <3
i enjoyed the game, though i think i found some sort of bug as i can't select anything in the shop. no button works in the shop except tab
Thank you so much! :) I'm sorry you had that bug, making note of it for v2 (maybe linked to the control scheme) - hopefully you were able to keep playing after that.
beautiful game. Madison supremacy she's a girlboss fr <3
Thank you so much for your kind words! :D Madison is awesome <3 <3
(and Linda too of course ;) )
is there a way to break into the bosses desk?
Not currently, although a cabinet near-by can be broken into to find a mysterious cog...
how many endings? love this game
So glad you like it, thank you! :)
There are 3 different (good) endings, no spoilers here just in case but if you download the Game Design Document from the game page (last link), you can find walkthroughs for all 3 under Scenarios: Winning the Game. Jeff disapproves of all 3. :D
Really fun game! Only thing that kind of annoyed me is that there's no option to skip the tutorial, since it gets a little tedious if you're trying to get every ending. But that didn't stop me from enjoying this lovely game! Kudos to you guys <3
Thank you very much! :D We really appreciate your kind words and you playing the game (to try multiple endings as well - awesome!) <3
Noted about the tutorial, it's a feature we have on the list for v2 (as well as skipping days for players who get very efficient).
love this, but for some reason it keeps restarting out of nowhere?
Thank you so much! :)
This is likely to happen if you don't interact with the game for a bit, is that what happened to you? The reason for this bug/feature is that we exhibited the game and so had to implement a reset point if someone left mid-game, in order to allow new players to start fresh. :) (something to remove in v2!)
Absoloutely love the idea of the game, unfortunately it won't let me pick up any items with the enter key :(
Thank you! :D Sorry you've encountered this bug :( I'm not 100% why that is, potentially clicking on the game screen locks the controls... Noted for future updates though! (hopefully will work ok if you restart!)
Theres a bug that i cant presss tab at all! :(
Oh no! :( This is tricky to troubleshoot without more info but if you restart the game it should work ok (sometimes clicking the screen locks the controls). Let us know!
Hey! Its me again, didnt see your reply.
So this bug is actually happening to me in the browser and as a downloaded game. Even on other sites that host Madison it doesnt work. I dont know if its bc of my Sodtware (Windows 11) or my Hardware (Normal Laptop) or if its happening to many people too :(
The only thing that doesnt work is the spacebar. Every other key works just fine except the spacebar. so, :(
Thanks for the extra info! You can play the game without the spacebar, it's not bound to anything critical. (but mouse controls do break all keyboard bindings due to a legacy bug we haven't yet fixed)
Hopefully that will work ok for you - and a big thank you for trying the game! :)
OH MY GOD I AM SO SORRY
TURNS OUT IM JUST A IDIOT XD
I always thought the (tab) key was the spacebar bc i use it always interchangeably. I am so sorry XD!
It works! Dont worry, it works. Thank god i googled it XD
Haha no that's totally ok! :D (and actually it's an interesting insight into what players might expect specific keys to do)
I'm just glad it all works and that you're able to play now :)
That was certainly fun! Also I liked the concept of having different ways to get him fired. Jeff deserved it lol.
Thank you Kisa! Glad you enjoyed this concept and had fun with the game. Jeff totally deserved it >:D
Thank you so much for your kind words! :) And so sorry you experienced that bug 😱 (if you remember the steps, let us know how it happened - I hope you will give getting Jeff fired another chance!)
AAAAAAAAAAAAA I cAn'T SKiP FPGHJK
We had a very tight schedule on Madison and ran out of time to implement a skipping feature, unfortunately. If we do Madison v2, it will be first on the list of improvements for sure!
Hope you enjoyed the game despite the FPGHJK moments ;-)
ok thank you and yeah i really enjoyed your game : )
I'm so glad to hear that - thank *you*! :-)
I can't skip
That's right, we ran out of time to implement that feature unfortunately. If there is a Madison v2, it's first on the list!
are there multiple ways to win?
Yes there are! There's a spoilery breakdown in the Design Document, but here are some hints: make friends with everyone... or do something with a blueprint (destroy or scribble all over it). Have fun!
I loved playing this game! There is so much more to it than I had expected and it was a pleasant surprise. I made a video on the game too.
Kimmy thank you so much for playing the game, and for your super cool video! :D So happy you enjoyed Madison, it was wonderful watching you play it. :-) (and spike Jeff :D)
No worries at all! Happy to keep spiking Jeff- I mean... Playing this game xD
I loved the game and it was very interesting! But im not sure if its just me, but when I try to unlock the cabinet it says I dont have a lockpick even when ive already made one
Thank you so much, I'm so glad you enjoyed it! :D :D As for the lockpick, I've never seen this bug, but I wonder if it could be because you tried to use the lockpick during the day? The game prevents you from doing that because it would be "bad office behaviour" in front of your colleagues,. ;-) You get a little pop-up explaining that. Let me know if that's not the case though!
(late reply) You have to use it multiple times
This game was amazing! The controls were easy to use, and the dialogue was phenomenal. Hope to see more games like this!
Thank you so much for your kind feedback!! I'm so glad you enjoyed the game, and that you liked the dialogue. Makes me very happy. :)
Hello,
I was recommended your game and I've had a look through it and I really like it! As I am a YouTuber, I would love to make a video on your game, but only if I have your permission to do so!
Have a nice day!
Kimmy ^ . ^
Hi Kimmy!
That's wonderful to hear, and I'd love to hear/watch your thoughts if you do play it!
Please go ahead with the video, and thank you for checking in first. If you're happy to do so, please share the link when it's done and I'll watch and share it too.
Have a nice day as well!
Pauline :)
Thank you for giving me the heads up about doing a video on your game. I will hopefully get a video done on it in the next couple of days, and I'll post the link to it once I've uploaded the video!
^ . ^
Thank you, I look forward to it :D
Pretty nice concept, I like how the game is not too hard, and pretty relaxing overall, would like to see the continuation as a full game, with more characters to interact, stuff to do, maybe some sort of different "chapters".
A few downsides, game really really REALLY need "fast forward" button, it's not much fun to wait for a character to move from desk when you've done everything else during the day, or just waiting till 5pm to move to the next stage of the game.
Also there was a bug with showing all crafting recipies... I didn't see the last two, but I could select them, so that's a plus )
Anyway, you've made a pretty good small game, it was pleasure to play it, I didn't finish it, it was too much of a chore to wait ) "fast forward" button is needed, or maybe more thing to do, but that's probably not for this small game, but maybe for a next one ;) Good luck with your future project, and take care.
Thank you so much for playing, and for your feedback! :-) Really glad you enjoyed it. I agree about the fast-forward - that was on our list but we didn't get time to implement it unfortunately. It's definitely one for future releases, something like activating the lift if all the work is done - or, like you suggest, adding even more actions/mischief. :D Thanks for playing and for the kind words - all the best to you too!
I'm loving the game, but I'm not sure what keys are used to buy or sell things from Jenny's pawn shop?
Thank you so much! :D The key to buy/sell is ENTER. If you highlight the item you want to buy/sell, the key will appear on the top of the screen. :-)
I wasn't sure how to highlight/move between the items, if I hit enter it closes the shop.
Edit: Nevermind! It's working now, Idk what the issue was before. I restarted it a few times and it worked.
Oh cool, just saw your edit! Great, let me know if you have any other issues or feedback! :D
(Just to clarify: arrow keys are used to move around the shop, you can buy/sell with ENTER and exit the shop altogether with TAB. The game is keyboard-only so it sounds like you had a mouse bug, if it was used.)
I'm not sure about where to report bugs/issues but on the Mac build I can't skip the intro. The buttons trigger their animations etc but nothing else happens.
Thanks for the comment! I just tried the Mac build above and Enter works fine to skip the intro, so I couldn't reproduce that. The game is keyboard only so perhaps you used the mouse? It can interfere with the transitions sometimes. Unless the issue is somewhere else? Let me know!
It works for me.
Thanks for confirming!