Ready to time travel to 2021 Hermitblr/Trafficblr?
Bogwaters Demo out now on itch.io!
A hand to hold until the end. A hand to hold because we're friends.
June 2021. The experimental Minecraft series Triple Life SMP has just aired its finale and you're obsessed with the dynamic between the Minecraft YouTubers Benbog and Mars OfTheBigWaters.
Problem? The fandom still hates shipping. Solution? Start an underground Discord server to quarantine your shipping activities. To avoid being cancelled, you'd have to scour your social media to find potential members who are secretly open to shipping.
ABOUT
Bogwaters is a free, text-based, interactive fiction browser game. The game is a parody of the Third Life SMP fandom in mid 2021 that is focused on Treebark (the romantic ship between Rendog/Martyn InTheLittleWood) and its fandom relevance.
This is a demo version (prototype) meant to test the limits and feasibility of this game.
You play as the owner of a Discord server named Bogwaters. Your goal is to invite 4 people within 7 days, from June 1 to June 7.
Full "how to play" guide can be found within the game.
This is the author's first interactive fiction game so it may be wonky. Constructive feedback is appreciated!
Word count: ~10k
Estimated play time: 30 to 45 minutes
FEATURES
3 endings
5 NPCs you can attempt to invite
Friendship levels for NPCs
Fandom enjoyment meter that can increase or decrease based on your actions
New Tumblr dashboard for each of the seven days
Tumblr, Discord, Ao3, DMs
Special events on certain days
Light/dark mode
CONTENT WARNINGS
MCYTshipping (hermit and traffic)
2019-2021 type ship discourse
2019 Hermitblr
2021 Hermittwt/Traffictwt
Canon-typical innuendos
Swearing
Written in Ink by Inkle Studios.
Original inspiration post here (May 13, 2025) (Yes I wrote this in less than two weeks)
I had a lot of fun making this and I hope you enjoy it too if you play it! Please talk to me if you have any thoughts and opinions, I'd love to ramble :D
interactive fiction idea: it’s 2021, you play as a new barktree shipper emerging from the hot new mcyt series triple life. your task is to sus out who else on your dash is also a secret shipper and invite them to your “controversial” shipping discord server without being cancelled. you’ll have to dig through ao3s, abandoned twitter accounts, old rpf fics from a pseud they no longer use, general posts, youtube comments, which username clipped this shippy moment between benthebog and martin ofthebigwaters
Formatting update, 2 new NPCs, randomisation feature, and quality of life changes
(Previous post)
Bogwaters is a free, text-based, interactive fiction browser game about running an underground shipping Discord server in the 2021 MCYT fandom, hosted on itch.io.
Formatting update:
Added more headers. Also added coloured dividers to section off text:
Home: teal
Tumblr: light blue
Discord: light purplish blue (Discord colour)
Ao3: dark red (Ao3 colour)
Messages: yellow
Check out users/invite: light green
Sleep/new day: gay man flag gradient
Trivia: colours for Tumblr, Messages, and Check out users are eyedropped from the old Tumblr UI
Feedback for these colours are welcome!
2 new NPCs:
Now you won't be locked out of winning the game if someone blocks you! The new NPCs are carbonara-art and hippie-benbog with their own storylines and unlock conditions.
New features:
Randomised mandatory daily fandom enjoyment decrease ranging from 3 to 7
When you sleep, there is a randomised potential +1 increase in reblog (20% chance) and post (10%) quota for the following day. Does not carry past that day.
In addition to blogs of the 2 new NPCs, blogs for doehills, ofthebigwaters, and riversymphony are added. These three are not interactable.
Quality of life changes:
Skippable prologue
Some scenes that don't have bearing on the gameplay are skippable (for this version, it's the conversation with kindredwaves on June 2)
An individual "check out a user" section now has a link to their respective Tumblr blog and vice versa
Misc:
Minor changes to dash content
Minor changes to text formatting
"Days played" shows up as a stat when you get an ending
"Days left (including today)" shows up in the home menu
Reduced animation
Reblogs and feedback are appreciated! Thanks for playing! <3
(Not promises, just things I think are fun. Making the short demo with 5 NPCs was demanding and I'm already proud of the demo even if the journey ends there. Then again, it'll probably get easier now I've figured out the system...?)
Spoilers for the demo
"Full" game will be inviting 20ish people over 30 days (whole of June). You'll get 10 days of leeway which might seem a little too much, but NPCs will probably scale in difficulty with longer research/bait periods later. There will be more than 20 invitable, non-hostile NPCs so you can pick and choose and won't immediately lose if you get blocked by anyone (which is what happens in the demo).
There'll be probably at least one snitch character— they won't join your server but will claim you're a freak or something. However you won't be cancelled if you meet certain conditions— keeping in with the spirit of the game (rewards kindness and curating your own experience), you can probably be saved if you do nice things and have good enough friendship with people.
Fun fact: I try to make the invitable NPCs have usernames that start with different letters of the alphabet. This makes searching for variables easier. For example, I can search "frd_b" and it'll automatically show "frd_benbiggitybong". This is why the 9 goes in front of blue-blobfish to avoid clashing with benbiggitybong. This is slightly annoying when it comes to naming because I can't make endless bogwarts urls (or ones that start with p and s, which I run into surprisingly often).
WEEK 1 (June 1 to 7)
Tutorial + set up week
Main recruitment method: scrolling PC's own dash and finding blogs from own dash and notifs
Two freebie invitable NPCs from Day 1
Unlocks three NPCs from three "factions" (Bogwarts, Shower Husbands, Dessert Duo)
Potential expansion: exploring into artists like carbonara-art and end-of-endings
Set up for NPCs: Mars' official artist dogwooddraws is teased here. (It wasn't supposed to be a Cherri reference because Martyn did have someone else drawing for him in his Third Life finale, but it's funny all the same). As is the mysterious clipper rubywinterrrises. You'll notice I ran out of ideas and went back to Treebark naming conventions.
Set up for events: classic Shower Husbands discourse, Stitties, mention of Twitter, MGC
WEEK 2 (June 8 to 14)
New recruitment method: MGC teams release and PC having exhausted their dash unlocks scrolling through fandom tags, so PC can find new people to follow and recruit. (A new page for me to update daily 😭 although at times I can just say "nothing new shows up in the tags")
New recruitment method: following the unlocking of Ao3 in Week 1 (starfish-wizard's route), you'll probably unlock more functions and can maybe even publish your own fic. The way it works is that you need to spend days writing your fic so it's not an immediate payoff. An interesting idea to look into is to sacrifice your daily post quota for fic writing time.
You'll be able to stalk people in the kudos section. I imagine this can be a lucrative setup because I can code it so you get notifs when someone kudoses, so the earlier you post it, the more value you'll get out of it. (Idk if I can randomise when people leave kudos)
This week kicks off with the exciting MGC team release of Ben Mars River and H20Bomb. You will have the opportunity to spread propaganda to the Rivergirls. This kicks off the Ben-Mars-River trio thing
dogwooddraws descends on Tumblr and people get skittish
WEEK 3 (June 15 to 21)
Middle of month so we kick off with some good old fashioned Twitter discourse. BNF Brian/Mumble shipper gets cancelled on Twitter and you have to save them because this incident adds to your daily fandom enjoyment decrease amount. So it's a perma debuff if you don't solve it soon.
New recruitment method: Twitter! Twitter will truly raise your chances of cancellation, however it also provides you with a wealth of shippers scared to death that will give you massive rewards (fandom enjoyment) in return
More of the Twitter fishies will be minors so be nice
MGC week! MGC week! MGC takes place on Saturday the 19th, mid to late week. This will be combined with the real life Hermit Rivals which had some gayass quotes. You should have finished exploring your Week 1 dash and will need to dig into fandom tags for new invitable NPCs, and MGC provides the perfect opportunity for people to talk
Mysterious clipper is still mysterious, but the research effort for them begins after you + server discover they clipped every good moment in MGC and start going "we love this mysterious person, please come here". I imagine this is a lengthy, multimedia process spanning days. This probably needs a member count unlock condition because Friendship Is Cyberstalking— I mean Power.
"dogwooddraws is a secret shipper" truthing begins when a new account pops up after the gayass MGC with a suspiciously familiar drawing style
WEEK 4 (June 22 to 30)
rubywinterrises and dogwooddraws storylines should conclude here if you meet the conditions, with Ruby in early-mid week and Dogwood in mid week.
Being nice to Ruby will give you more propaganda power (since they're the clipper) which helps you to sneak in the last few NPCs
There will be some climatic, mandatory "discourse" moment which pushes you to your limit (and reveals whatever backstory PC has), but if you reach a member count (which should be fairly obtainable if you're looking to win), your friends will defend you because Friendship Is Power
There should be more shippy writers in Ao3 that you can stalk, including one anon that you try to suss out their real identity (their real identity will be a mutual from Week 1 dash who was seemingly uninvitable)
For the final week, "last resort options" for the NPCs introduced in earlier weeks should pop up. Eg. you can choose to make an oddly specific post that guarantees a follow back and friendship but it won't raise friendship with other NPCs. (Eg. If you make general "I like Shower Husbands" posts, you'll raise friendship with all the SH people)
(In the demo, this is why the post option for the SH discourse day is either a follow back or a block from the SH guy. The SH guy has the lowest requirement (excluding the freebie NPC) and I don't want the "easy one" to be locked out because you have to save later days for the harder NPCs)
If you bogpost enough in all the weeks combined (ie. planning in advance), "random" previous uninvitable NPCs from earlier weeks will come into your askbox going "you've converted me into a shipper help" and you can be like "Quit your job. Join my shipping server".
MISC
Emergency "get out of jail free" card that temporarily boosts your fandom enjoyment back up. This means you can get to zero once, then that's it. That card is people posting 2019 SHIPlakebog lmao
Semi-famous Permitcraft fanfic writer who joins your server with a different pseud and only you know their real identity. You can be a dick and expose them, but of course there will be consequences.
Your Twitter exploration can be aided if you befriend Tumblrinas who have Twitter experience (since you don't have it and your bestie Waves is already cancelled lmao). A Twitter literacy meter could be funny
Special member count unlockable events like making a meme or AU with the server that goes on Tumblr that unlocks more people
I don't really want to include member + member conflict within the server even though it's realistic because it'll be a pain to code. Would be fun if you could only invite out of two people because they hate each other. (Has no bearing on endgame because that'll make one choice better than the other and I don't want that) 2019 veteran Waves will warn you so you won't invite both and lose
Friendship chains in which inviting someone also increases friendship with their friends. You can't see this in the demo since the main three are all from different friend groups, but I imagine this can start snowballing later.
Because apparently I'm doing this thing now (interactive fiction parodying the 2021 Treebark Rise and the "hidden" Discord server that nurtured it)
I'm trying to make a mini demo version just to test out mechanics and what is feasible. It'll probably last around seven days (June 1 to 7) with individual dashes for each day and 5/6 NPCs you can invite
On June 1, you're pretty much guaranteed to unlock 2 invitable NPCs that act as a tutorial. One of them will accept, the other will reject. The one who rejects you has no negative consequences because it's a tutorial and because they're chill about shipping. The one who will accept should be as obvious as 2021 Tumblr would allow when everyone was on their eggshells
You can make one (1) post each day, which in this game mostly serves to raise "friendship levels" with NPCs. On June 1, you will be given three choices to post— they each correspond to a different NPC with different interests and will give you a slight boost for the one you chose. Your goal is to gain enough friendship to invite them. These will require effort unlike the tutorial NPCs
The first NPC is one who follows and likes you but is skittish about openly shipping. You can increase friendship by posting things they like (since they will see you on their dash), reblogging their posts, and showing your approval, which helps them to open up.
The second NPC is one you follow, is fine with shipping, but doesn't follow you back. You can increase friendship by reblogging from them with nice tags (to tell them you exist since they won't see your posts on their dash). Or you can be mean and they'll block you and you won't get enough people to win.
The third NPC is one you don't follow and they don't follow you back, but you get the vibes they're a covert shipper and you'll need all the help you can get. This one deals with the paranoia of "is this stranger chill or not?" as you frantically hunt into the depths of their socials
Shoutout to my current NPCs platypus-crown (player character aka PC) kindredwaves judasredemption benbiggitybong gayshulkerbox starfish-wizard and 9-blue-blobfish.
I have added block/follow choices which I am lowkey regretting because every post will be forced to do a "have you blocked this user?" check (not feasible with complicated conditional choices). Then again, if you see a post from someone you blocked, it feels like realistic Tumblr bugginess. And you shouldn't be blocking people for no reason because your whole dash will be empty and you'll lose lmao
Altar scene speech is here somewhere. As is gray long and strong #whoremembers
SHIPlakebog. Or whatever.
Future bits:
Yes there will be a MGC this month (Minecraft Gamer Championship). Yes it is Purple Piranhas 15 with Ben Mars River and H2OBomb, making it 3/4 Blue Blobfish 9
Yes Mars will make his stupid jealousy comment and the dash will explode
benbog is so funny to me because you know he’s this soggy boggy man with a sheepish grin and his clothes are drenched and his long hair is wet but everyone is like ohhh goddd he’s so hot he’s a tumblr sexyman <3 and he says shit like “my bog isn’t the only thing that’s big 😳” and “ladies, gentlemen, everyone in between, you’re all welcome in my bog 😏” and he calls mars “marsie🥰” which is cringe but that’s who he is. everyone’s like “ben biggity bog! :D” and he signs all of his messages with BB because he’s baby. mars is like well if i’m big waters… and you’re big bog… then we’re big 😳 together 😃🏳️🌈
