沉海录

About the Game

沉海录 is a single-player, text-based detective puzzle game set in the Jiangnan region of China in the early twentieth century. As a bank investigator, you read historical records, collect keywords, search for further evidence, and compare accounts to identify members of the Li family. Your goal is to reconstruct their destroyed family tree and investigate the past behind a dispute over property and inheritance.

A shipwreck and a destroyed family tree

Liuchuan, 1935. A cargo boat belonging to the Li family's silk business sinks on its way to Shanghai. A loan remains unpaid, different branches of the family make conflicting claims to its assets, and the family genealogy has been burned. Begin with documents supplied by the police and piece together the family's history through newspapers, letters, diaries, and old photographs.

Read closely and choose what to investigate

Use the mouse to select names, places, events, and other potentially useful passages from documents and collect them in your notebook. Excerpts retain their sources so you can revisit the context. Decide which statements support each other, whether different names refer to the same person, and which period to investigate next.

Search using a keyword, a source, and a year

Use an excerpt as a keyword in the notebook's investigation interface, then select a source type and a year to look for related records. Newly discovered documents are added to your evidence cabinet. The central loop is to read, extract a lead, find another record, and use the new evidence to reconsider your deductions.

Identify people and reconstruct the family tree

Examine people in old photographs and read the inscriptions on their backs. Collect portraits and compare them with newspaper reports and private records to infer identities. Enter names and fates in the family tree and submit your deductions for verification. Relationships are spread across different sources and years, so no single document provides every answer.

Reconstruct the residence and direct searches

Use servants' statements about roads, courtyards, and neighboring locations to work out missing directions and place names on a sketch of the Li residence. Once the sketch is complete, choose locations for the police to search. The objects and documents they uncover provide further leads for your investigation.

Follow leads through the library

Search by book title using information you have discovered, and use author information to distinguish books that share a title. Read catalog descriptions and compare them with other records. A book title, a form of address in a letter, or an inscription on a photograph may help explain evidence found elsewhere.

The investigation centers on careful reading and evidence-based deductions. Establish identities, trace family relationships, and gradually reconstruct what happened through your own reasoning, using a monochrome hand-drawn interface filled with documents and photographs.