The Archives Sim: My Life As A Background Archival Assistant
Make your choices. Face your fear. Date your colleagues. Hug Martin. Punch Elias. Enjoy Sky Blue. Or other combinations*.
A love letter to the fandom in the form of a perfectly serious, utterly indulgent fanservice self-insert Archive simulator, using the ChoiceOf game system.
(*You can't punch Martin.)
This is a fan-created choose-your-own-adventure story/game based on the podcast The Magnus Archives, by The Rusty Quill Ltd, which is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. This game thus is and always will be free and no profit can ever be made from it. I claim no affiliation with nor endorsement by The Rusty Quill.
It was made in 2020 for that year's Rusty Quill Big Bang, using Choice Of Games's ChoiceScript. This is version 1.02 of the game, last updated on 14 June 2021, ported to itch upon the closure of Dashingdon hosting service in January 2025.
This is a mature game intended for a mature audience, with a toggle to lock out or enable text-only NSFW/erotic content. For more information, including a long list of content warnings, please check out the AO3 page here.
Development log
- Port launch bugsJan 19, 2025
Comments
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this is really fun but i AM curious : can you date multiple people?
Yup! There will be zero consequences, positive or negative, because I believe in polyamory and it would be hell (and unpleasant) to code each character reacting to each other possible relationship. No one even minds if you date Elias.
Can we
Mayhaps
Romance Michael...here? >.>
Just asking
There's a tiny mini route about getting its attention (which gets you an achievement), but not a full route nor an established relationship like the other characters.
wow, I’m really late but my ending was really depressing on my part. Me and Martin both sorta died in my domain of the lonely which I described as “ It's your childhood bedroom, you find yourself wanting to reach out and go talk to someone but you are scared that person will get upset with you, maybe you should just disappear..” so uh yeah. Also if the creator is still active for this how does one perchance get marked by the web?
Okayy I figured out how to join the web amd everyone fret not I think I got the good ending this time because I managed to save Sasha, Tim, kinda Martin (like he didn’t die which is good) and at the very least befriended Jon so everything is good 👍
there's no "good ending", there's a few non-standard early endings (where you die, mostly) but that aside the game always ends at the end of S4/start of S5 with the canon setting :D of course, some players may find that ruling a domain as an avatar of some unspeakable horror with their traumatised and/or also monstrous partne is an ideal and happy ending!
playing through this game and I find it quite lovely so far! I'm on week 17 and I have been called by the corruption, but haven't answered it. Wondering, if I get "marked" by a power/offered avatar status am I locked out of being marked by other powers?
Edit: Yeah, just found the answer, you can absolutely get multiple avatar options!
Yup, you can get all the marks you want (though some are easier than others, eg there are a lot of opportunities to encounter the Corruption in season 1 and the Lonely in season 4), it's just once you have answered the call and picked one that you can't switch to another on this run!
Wow, this is the first time I've heard of this game. Why did people keep quiet about it? I found out about it from a bot on sai. I absolutely loved it, it creates a vibe of a book or archived recordings. I need to ask around on reddit and tiktok how wed
Archives Sim <3333
Ah, being the first avatar of the Extinction, having saved and loved Sasha only to know her ire as she Witnesses (copyright Eye) the miniature fallout of humanity's hubris and desire to play god.
The Mangled and Ghoulish Form of your Ex-human Lover, staring at you with Radioactive Green Eyes like an intrigued puppy: Would you like to take notes? Record maybe? Perhaps catalogue? Timeline, even?
jon purring WHAAHAH oh god i love this game so much. do you plan to update it in the future? i'd love to play through the eyepocalypse :))
Thank you! I originally did plan to expand it, before getting hit with a multi-years writing drought/Fallow Period, but even if I do manage to pick it back up and post a content update, it's more likely to be extra characters routes than a season 5 storyline.
ohhhhhhhhhhhhh The Archives Sim my beloved. thank you 4 making this and sharing it with us this Slaps Ive had so much fun playing it
this game is literally so fun ive played it like 20 times atp, sometimes its so funny, other times its just sad but like. Thats tma pretty much
10/10 would play 1000 times over
Thank you! ^^