Phosphor [&]

The short version

It's a text-based browser game about an alternate Victorian London that was stolen by bats and deposited in an enormous cave where reality gets Freaky. Highlights include punchy, hilarious writing, systems that make failure as interesting as success, sad squid people, and being casually queer af.

It really picks up when you get deeper in, and the devs are always making the game better. Give it a try, it's free!

The Long Version

How Fallen London works

Fallen London is fairly straightforward on the surface. The interface looks like this:

The game, fundamentally, is about clicking buttons to do things. Some of the things that you can do have you roll for success or failure based upon your stats, which you level up by doing things and boost by equipping items. As you do things, the world opens up, allowing you to Do Yet More Things. It's basically if a choose-your-own-adventure book was a RPG.

The rate at which you can Do Things is limited by the action system. To do most things, you must spend an action - you get one action every ten real-world minutes, and you can stockpile up to 20 actions at a time.

This was something I found frustrating back in the day. Even nowadays, there are still times when I'm like "come on, I don't want to wait an hour to finish this story!" But for the most part, I've come to see the action system as a blessing in disguise. It puts a hard cap on how much time I can spend on the game; it lets me take my time deciding what to do next; it lets me set the game down and check on it another time. This has been great for my current schedule and my low energy levels, and it's a large part of why I've kept up with it for months.

About failure

I described Fallen London as a hybrid of a choose-your-own-adventure book and a RPG. And as we all know, part of the fun of choose-your-own-adventure books is discovering all of the ways to die horribly!

And believe me, there's no shortage of ways to die horribly (and hilariously) in Fallen London. Burn your eyebrows off while reading forbidden texts. Set a cunning trap for your enemies... and then fall into it. Get punted off a cliff by nuns. The possibilities go on and on!

Thankfully, this deep below the earth, the laws of reality are more like suggestions. Death is rarely permanent - most of the time, it's merely an inconvenience. So, gameplay-wise, if you die, your character will be perfectly fine. There's no limit on the number of times they can kick the bucket - they'll keep coming back to life like everyone else, ready for their next embarrassing death.

And this goes for things other than death! Going to jail, going mad, scandalous exile - all of these are only inconveniences, and your character will recover again and again. So go wild! Take risks! Make bad choices on purpose! You'll find that in Fallen London, failure is often as interesting as success.

(There is only ONE way to make your character well and truly unplayable, and that's to do it on purpose: by following an entirely optional storyline that outright warns you not to do it, and gives you many, many opportunities to Stop before the point of no return. You will not do it by accident.)

The writing

There's a number of words that come to mind when trying to describe the writing: "punchy," "darkly hilarious," "delightfully absurd."

There are few illustrations; the plot is given to you a few paragraphs at a time. The writing, therefore, does a lot with a little. It's vivid, precise, and most crucially, it knows when to leave things to the imagination.

As for the actual content of the writing? There is a LOT of horror, don't get me wrong. But more than that, there's Shenanigans.

You start off as a complete nobody, lost in an underworld where cats talk, devils promenade in the streets, and the stars may or may not be giant luminous bugs on the ceiling of an impossibly large cave. Mysteries dangle, tantalizing, all around: who are the enigmatic Masters who preside over the city? What slithers behind the mirrors? And why do they call London the Fifth City?

By endgame, you might be a scholar of forbidden languages, a crime lord, a renowned zee-captain, a railway baron, and so much more! You will have dabbled in esoteric arts beyond the ken of the common Londoner; you will have burrowed through the mysteries of the setting, layer by layer.

But more importantly? You will still be a loser with more curiosity than sense. You will fall off of ladders in the middle of a heist. You will try to use your forbidden wizard knowledge to make booze, and it will blow up in your face. You may or may not be scammed into buying the world's most expensive boot polish.

If you can embrace that fact, then you will have a very, very good time in this game.

Caveats and content warnings

But as I said, there is a LOT of horror in this game! Be aware! Here's a (probably not comprehensive) list of things you are likely to encounter:

• Body horror. So much body horror.
• Violence! Murder, galore!
• Eye horror. Spiders. Possibly related.
• Drug usage, of the "booze, smoking, and fantasy drugs" flavor.
• Unreality/mindfuckery.
• Fantasy racism/speciesism, especially against sad squid people.

And the Light Fingers storyline in particular (which is optional!) bears special mention:

In addition, the game is almost 15 years old, and its age shows in some of the writing and mechanics. If you can make it past the mind-numbing one-button grinds and the tired bomb-throwing anarchist jokes, though, there's a vast, dark, and marvelous world waiting for you. It is, of course, by no means perfect - but in my opinion? It's worth it.

What's the monetization like?

The evergreen question: if the game's free to play, then where does its funding come from?

In short, the game makes money from two sources: a subscription called Exceptional Friendship, and a premium currency called Fate. Exceptional Friendship allows you to stockpile actions up to 40 instead of 20, lets you gain minor perks from the House of Chimes, and gives you access to Exceptional Stories, special premium-only standalone stories released every month within the game. Fate, meanwhile, allows you to purchase numerous one-off perks within the game, as well as past Exceptional Stories.

Neither Fate nor Exceptional Friendship are required to enjoy the game. But if you do enjoy the game, and have money to spare, it's a worthwhile investment.

Tips for newcomers

My main advice? Go in with friends, if you can! Fallen London is primarily a solo game, but there are little ways that you can help each other out. You can tend each other's wounds, for example! You can also send assassins after each other. All in good sport, of course.

Read before you click! Especially if there's bold text. The bold text does not fuck around.

I'd recommend having a character concept in mind, even a hazy one. This game is rich with story and setting, and I've found it a lot more fun to interact with as A Guy. It takes away some of the optimization anxiety.

Speaking of which... do NOT stress out about efficiency, especially when you're starting out. If you find yourself tiring of one thing, let yourself wander off after something else, even if it's not what you "should" be doing. Let yourself chase the shiny! The beautiful thing about this game is that as long as you're spending actions somewhere, you are making progress.

And last of all: ask for help when you need it. The FL Cohost community in particular is small but mighty.

Welcome, delicious friend.