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You awake with a start. You're sitting in your favourite seat in the Old Bodleian's Upper Reading Room, and everything seems to be exactly as it should be. There’s the copy of 'Shadows Out of Time' that you were reading before you nodded off.
But something's not right. Where are all the other readers? Where's... anybody? Among the dreaming spires of central Oxford, you must explore the world around you alone. Or perhaps you're not alone at all...
Produced as a printable/PDF gamebook for Halloween 2018 and made available at https://www.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0006/254976/Shadows-Out-of-Time-Bodleian-Halloween-2018.pdf, adapted for use as interactive fiction.
| Average Rating: based on 3 ratings Number of Reviews Written by IFDB Members: 1 |
This short CYOA-style piece -- originally published as an 8-page gamebook PDF -- has you wake up in a dark and strangely deserted Bodleian Library in Oxford. You can take a variety of paths through said library, experiencing terrors of suggestion more than any actual horrors, in what is basically a cyclical structure.
The piece seems very dependent on prior knowledge of the Bodleian. Not so much to solve it (there is no solving involved), but to appreciate the places that are evoked, since the writing is heavy on naming specific parts of the building and letting that do the work. Perhaps this is more enjoyable if you know where you are and how things connect to each other. But my knowledge of the library is incredibly meagre (I once walked past it as a kid) and I didn't get much out of this piece.