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Story file and source code
Contains city-of-dead-leaves.a3c
Requires an Alan interpreter. Visit IFWiki for download links. (Compressed with ZIP. Free Unzip tools are available for most systems at www.info-zip.org.)
Walkthrough and map
by David Welbourn

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City of Dead Leaves

by Felix Pleşoianu profile

Surreal
2016

Web Site

(based on 4 ratings)
2 reviews

About the Story

There's nothing left in your life. There's nothing left in anyone's life. Will he even remember you after all this time? Will he want you back?

City of Dead Leaves is a story told to me by a place that I saw in a dream. As such it's a very personal thing; hopefully you'll find it worth your time. It's not a puzzle game, though it has puzzles; it's not a story game either, though it has a story. It's about cities, and futures, and feelings. About us.


Game Details


News

Almost three years after publication, the (canonical) Texture edition finally fixes a couple of issues, courtesy of a diligent reviewer: you can now go back out in the street after entering the house (not needed to win, but nice to have), and a typo is no more. Also, as of this month you can play the game on the official website, in addition to textadventures.co.uk and the Texture library.
Reported by Felix Pleșoianu | History | Edit | Delete
As of 15 Nov 2016, City of Dead Leaves is also available in a Texture edition on several IF hosting services.
Reported by Felix Pleșoianu | History | Edit | Delete
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Number of Reviews: 2
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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
Short, mysterious and poetic, August 16, 2019
by Stephane F. (France)

The introduction and the rest of the story refers to a mysterious "him" that you have supposedly (Spoiler - click to show)abandoned because of a "year-long quest".

The strange little "town-with-twisty-streets-and-tilting-houses"(to quote Thomas Ligotti's "Degenerate little town") is a good old cliché, but it works well here and the general ambiance is as poetic as melancholic. We don't know what happened to the world, which seems pretty quiet and harmless for a post-apocalyptic (maybe) setting.

You don't really know where you are and why, so the purposeless exploration feels like a dream - and in fact the game is the adaptation of a dream the author had. The end of the game (Spoiler - click to show)is pretty cryptic and nothing gets really explained. I couldn't say if that's frustrating or satisfying.

Technical remarks:
(Spoiler - click to show)
I noticed only one typo : "smal bookshelf".

There is a probable bug : once you are in the old house, you can't go back from the kitchen to the street. The link goes to the dark corridor.

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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
Map painting, August 18, 2019
by f-a

The game lures you in with the incipit of a story, but is essentially a place description: the complex really feels alive (or dead), vivid and part of a bigger narrative.

OK experiment in "map painting" ("location narrative"?), plot itself is not satisfying/fulfilling.

It is quite short so I recommend playing it!

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City of Dead Leaves on IFDB

Recommended Lists

City of Dead Leaves appears in the following Recommended Lists:

Civitas by Juuli
Cities.

New walkthroughs for November 2022 by David Welbourn
On Monday, November 28, 2022, I published new walkthroughs for the games and stories listed below! Some of these were paid for by my wonderful patrons at Patreon. Please consider supporting me to make even more new walkthroughs for works...

Polls

The following polls include votes for City of Dead Leaves:

Nontradiational Parser, Gamebook, IF and Systems by thecanvasrose
I'm making a list based on this poll as I play the elected games and can write snippets about them. See here: https://ifdb.org/viewlist?id=3n6rheokfkcsntf - - - - - - - - - I'm looking for games which are: 》Neither parser nor gamebook...

IF about human beings by namekuseijin
I'm looking for IF about human beings and human struggles in a more or less common setting. No zombies, vampires, orcs, demons, robots, slimy aliens, gods or monsters of any kind; just plain human beings please. Yes, I know many works...

Apocalypse How by katz
Post-apocalyptic games: equal parts cliche and fun. Authors are free to dispense with pesky NPCs, complicated modern technology, and implementing working everyday items. Players can have no inhibitions about acting like murderous...




This is version 8 of this page, edited by David Welbourn on 29 November 2022 at 4:35am. - View Update History - Edit This Page - Add a News Item - Delete This Page