Rent-a-Vice

Rent-a-Vice is a 150,000-word interactive cyberpunk-noir mystery novel told entirely through text, with no graphics or sound effects. You play a private investigator with a bad habit, an ex and heavy debts, and face the possible loss of custody of your child. When a mysterious client hires you to find their missing lover, you investigate the clandestine Rent-a-Vice industry and experience its technology for yourself.

Virtual experiences

In the near future, paying users can rent other people’s “virtual experiences.” The people known as feeders sublet their own bodies, risking their lives so customers can safely experience extreme, potentially self-destructive vices such as binge eating and cliff diving. The investigation raises questions about whether users seek entertainment or something deeper, what feeders gain beyond profit, and whether virtual experience compromises society’s well-being or normalizes vice and disorder, as etho-politicians claim.

Your choices

Your decisions shape the story and how you deal with your own vices. You can fight or embrace your personal demons, resist or exploit the machinery of power, and expose corruption or use it for your gain. As you test your skills as a PI and share other people’s experiences of life and death, you can save people in trouble, extort them for your silence, or go rogue and try to destroy the industry.

You can play as a male, female or non-binary character, and as gay, straight or bisexual. Your choices also shape your relationships and future: trade favors to retain custody of your child, reunite with your ex or find romance with someone new. You can befriend unlikely allies, champion marginalized people, establish a new ethical standard or step on corpses to climb to the top.