Some of my most recent games writing work has been for the browser game Fallen London, in which Victorian London has been stolen to an underground cavern on the shore of a massive sea, called the Zee.

Image: "What was the Affable Explorer to you?" The player's choices include "a long-ago friend," "a one-time lover" and "a maritime rival," though that action is locked by this player's lack of Zeefaring experience.

In The Stolen Soirée, January 2026's exceptional story, the player receives an invitation to a party being thrown by an eccentric explorer back from a Zee voyage.

The player chooses their relationship to the Explorer as well as their choice of clothing: every party story needs a dress-up scene. Different choices of garment raise and lower the player's stats when attempting challenges at the party.

Image: "A Self-Declared Heiress." As a crowd of admirers fawn over the Heiress, another guest remarks that the man she claims is her father had no daughters.

Also attending the party is the Self-Declared Heiress, a beautiful and charming woman with a dubious parental claim and even more dubious motives. As the Heiress sneaks around the Explorer's mansion of maritime oddities, the player can choose to follow her, to dance with her, and to attempt to earn her appreciation.

Image: "The Specimen." The Explorer auctions a glowing egg while a strange voice scratches at the player's mind.

As the party reaches its climax, the Affable Explorer reveals his latest Zee treasure: a strange, glowing egg that seems to exert a strange control over him.

Whatever this Specimen is, it seems to whisper inside the player's mind, talking in future tense about the player's duty to free it from the Explorer's control.

Image: "The Heiress in Black." The Heiress catches the player following her. Depending on her relationship to the player, the player can choose to work in tandem with her or to race to claim the prize.

After the guests leave, the Heiress attempts to steal the Specimen. The player can work with her or in competition with her. The Explorer, however, may be more dangerous than he seems.

The Self-Declared Heiress is a trans character: rejected by her wealthy father, she now hustles and steals to survive. Her story is paralleled by that of the Specimen's: kept prisoner by the Explorer, it can never hatch and realize the future it has already seen for itself.

Image: "The Linguist's Lecture." The player can eavesdrop on two of the other major characters: the Prudent Professor and an undercover Ministry agent.

The Poetry of God, September 2026's exceptional story, is about language, translation, nationalism and liberation. It opens with a lecture from the Impetuous Linguist, an experimental researcher into the Correspondence, Fallen London's mysterious astral language.

When the Linguist goes missing following the lecture, the Prudent Professor recruits the player to discreetly search for her missing colleague. From a hub area, the player can search for leads at the Linguist's flat, her office at Benthic University, and eventually the Ministry of Public Decency.

Image: "The Linguist's Laboratory." The player can attempt to decipher the Correspondence sigil in the machine, or to extract the book currently slotted into it.

The Linguist's flat conceals an impossibly large laboratory, built around a nightmarish machine. This "literary device" uses English books like Mary Shelley's Frankenstein to alter the meaning of Correspondence sigils, exploiting the slipperiness of translation to alter reality itself.

The laboratory scenes take some inspiration from puzzle adventure games like Myst, and allow for experimentation with different combinations of books and states.

Image: "Easily outwitted." The player corners the Ambitious Censor, and receives his business card – and an invitation to meet with him at headquarters.

The player is dogged in their search by the Ambitious Censor, an agent of the Ministry of Public Decency who hopes to use the Linguist's illegal research to secure his own promotion. His ultimate goal is to reintroduce British nationalism into a society transformed by its relocation to an underground world, but like most fascists, his competence does not match his ambition.

Colluding with the authorities offers a rare prize in Fallen London: the ability to reduce one's criminal record.

Image: "As Long As It Takes." The Prudent Professor discloses a concealed mark of her affiliation (which some players will recognize as the living eye of a cosmic being).

A second party interested in the Linguist's research reveals herself: the Prudent Professor, the Linguist's trusted colleague and clandestine romantic partner, is an agent for the Liberation of Night, and wants to wield her partner's research as a weapon against the hegemonic powers of the world.

In the end, the player decides whether the Linguist's paper – a paean to the libertory and anti-colonial power of language – is published, instrumentalized by the anarchists, or surrendered to the Ministry.