Voted Best in Show among all English language games created as part of the Commonplace Book project.

The letter you received from Arkwright's nephew Carter was clear enough: when the old man dies the inheritance tax will be too great. To raise some capital, the nephew has set up buyers for Arkwright's collection of rare and old books...

Dead Cities is a text based game by Jon Ingold, which ruminates on the nature of time, of life, and of death. And how books, ideas, are part of the cycle. Ingold maintains tension between the ordinary and the mystical throughout the piece, drawing on the Dunsanian side of Lovecraft's style to pull us into contact with the numinous.

Download Dead Cities here. A 1.5 MB "gblorb" file, you'll need to download the "Glulx" interpreter to play (Mac or Windows).

Jon Ingold is an award-winning author of numerous works of Interactive Fiction, including All Roads, considered one of the top five modern text adventures by adventuregamers.com.