Instructions · Game 01
How to play.
You have the book in your hands. This page is everything you need to start. Watch the walkthrough first if you would rather be shown than told, then keep reading.
Roughly two minutes. Watch it on YouTube if the player will not load.
Before you start
What you need.
The book
That is the game. There is no app, no board, no companion anything.
Something to write with
A pencil and any scrap of paper works for tracking what you are carrying.
A quiet hour
Or several. The story runs for hours and it is better unhurried.
No dice. No hit points. No timers. No character sheet. Nothing to set up.
01 · Moving
The numbers are the controller.
Start at page 1 and read. When you want to go somewhere, do not look for a list of choices at the bottom of the page. Look at the picture.
Hidden in every illustration are numbers: on a door, a ladder, a cave mouth, a path through the reeds, a trapdoor in a tavern floor. Each number is a place you can actually go. Find one you like and turn to that page.
That is the whole system. You move forward and backward freely, the way you would walk around a real place, without ever re-reading a wall of text.
02 · Items
Pick things up.
When you find something worth taking, the page tells you its code: a letter and a number, like A1 or B4. Write the code down. That is your inventory.
Later a page will ask whether you are carrying a particular item. Check your list. If you have it, the page tells you what that unlocks. If you do not, you know what to go looking for.
There are over a hundred items in the book. Some open doors. Some open side quests. Some will not make sense until much later, and that is on purpose.
03 · Stuck
Go look somewhere else.
Sometimes a door is locked. Sometimes you need a rope, or a key, or something you have not found yet.
Retrace your steps
Turn back to a page you have already been and look at the picture again. Numbers you walked past the first time are still there.
Check what you are carrying
A locked door usually means an item exists somewhere that opens it. Your list tells you what you do not have yet.
You cannot lose
There is no game over and no restart. A wrong turn costs you nothing but a page turn, so try the door.
That is everything.
Turn to page 1 and start reading. Patrick wakes up with a headache and no memory of falling asleep, and his uncle is not in the house.