Don't Drain The Lake

Grandpa left you his cabin on the shore of Hollow Creek Reservoir. And a note on the table.

"Whatever happens, don't drain the lake."

The bank wants its money by the first frost. The mill downstream pays a dollar for every cubic metre you send over the dam. And out in the middle of the lake, a bell tower stands in the water where no bell tower should be.

So you pick up the bucket.

Don't Drain The Lake is a first-person incremental about emptying a mountain reservoir: half a million cubic metres, and every drop is real. Scoop by hand, then set pumps in the water yourself, wherever they will do the most good.

• A gentle hydraulic puzzle. Pumps lift water over the dam, and the lower the lake, the harder they work. Pair them in series, gang them on a manifold, prime a siphon with a bucket of lake water, cut a notch in Grandpa's dam.
• The lake breaks apart. As the water drops, a reed bay, a flooded quarry and a whole arm of the valley are cut off behind their own sills, each a pond of its own.

There is no progress bar. A full lake is dawn. Every metre you drain moves the sun across the sky, and somewhere near the bottom it will be night. The light, the music and the weather follow the water down.

More than fifty finds wait on the lakebed, with Grandpa's notes in bottles a little further down each time. Around the valley there are places nobody tells you about: a candle-lit grotto, a rope swing, a lookout with a brass telescope, an old pickup with a birch growing through its bed. Grandpa's clock still keeps time. His radio still plays, and the static gets worse the further you walk.

When you need a break, skip stones off the pier (Grandpa's record is eleven, set in 1957), hop the old ferry pilings out to his fishing rod, or sit in his rocking chair and watch the lake go down without you.

It is a game that ends: one evening, 60 to 90 minutes. Grandpa asked you not to. You are going to anyway. Let's find out why he asked.