The Last Dry House

Ask them anything

The Harlow dam failed Sunday night. By Tuesday the water has the town, the roads and the bridges, and your farmhouse on the hill is the last dry ground for miles. After dark, people walk up out of the flood and knock.

Open the little window in the door and talk to them. Type whatever you want to ask. Every stranger answers in their own words, out of their own life: where they were when the water came, who they're looking for, how they got up the hill.

Some of them are survivors. Some of them are the Drowned. They have a dead neighbour's face and remember all of that neighbour's life, up to the moment the water closed over them. Nothing after. They don't know they're dead.

The radio is your only proof

Every night the emergency broadcast says what's changed. The Miller Road bridge is gone. St. Anne's bell tower came down. The Drowned never heard. Ask the right question and one of them will tell you, sure as anything, that they came over the bridge.

But the living get things wrong too. Someone who's been up in the hills since Monday hasn't heard either. Write down what they tell you, check their license, ask your guests if they know them. One answer never settles it.

Every answer costs someone

• There are four beds. Once they're full, letting someone in means putting someone out.
  
• Let one of the Drowned in, and by morning someone in the house is gone.
  
• Turn a survivor away, and tomorrow the radio reads their name with the dead.
  
• A Drowned you turn away doesn't go back to the water. It waits until the house is asleep, then calls one of your guests to the door by name.

Hold the house

Keep the generator cranked or the lock on the door lets go. Walk the dark house and question your guests. Put your shoulder to the door when something tries to break it down. When it gets in, hide, and hold your breath.

Features

• Type anything. Strangers answer in their own words, from lives written for the game.
  
• 65 strangers. A different cast, and different Drowned, every time you play.
  
• Deduction you can check: every one of the Drowned is wrong about something the radio told you.
  
• A PS1-style farmhouse in a storm, with the flood at the foot of the hill and a town going dark across the water.
  
• Runs on your own PC. No servers, and no internet connection needed while you play.

About the voices

The strangers' words are written as you play by a small AI language model running offline on your own graphics card, and spoken by a synthesized voice on your processor. The game decides who is Drowned, what each person knows and every clue; the model only puts it into words. Nothing you type leaves your computer.