Buster's

The year is 1999 and Buster’s is one of the last standing VHS rental stores in Washington. The looming switch to DVD has the manager, Benjamin, stressed and he is a little more harsh than usual. When the daily newspaper shows up and reveals a local woman went missing everything changes. 

Your job is to find out what happened to the woman, can you solve the mystery?

Buster’s started development in September of 2024 with four people working on it. During the first few months there was a change of character artists and a new direction for the story. Originally Buster’s was going to take place in 1984 and have two main story branches the player could choose from: mystery or drama. Looking at the deadline the drama branch was dropped and the mystery narrative became the focus. The year was changed to 1999 because of the incredible movie selection to incorporate for example “But I’m a Cheerleader”, “Scream”, “Silence of the Lambs” and many more. In January of 2025, the team expanded to eight and the new programmers hit the ground running and got the demo to where it currently is. This is just a slice of what Buster’s has to offer and there is going to be much more coming in the next few weeks.

Kayla Ricker, Columbia College Chicago, undergraduate; Blake Larpenteur, Columbia College Chicago, undergraduate; Meghan Patnode, Columbia College Chicago, Undergraduate; Aeon Schell, Columbia College Chicago, undergraduate; Isaac Christophe, Columbia College Chicago, undergraduate; Adelle Raymond, Columbia College Chicago, undergraduate; Thomas Kesling, Columbia College Chicago, undergraduate; Sean Brown, Columbia College Chicago, undergraduate