- Time
- 5–20 minutes
- Version
- 1.0.0
- Keyboard
- Fully keyboard playable
- Sound
- Not needed
Interactive Fiction
The Bardo Bard
“If you could simply wait — refuse every door — what would you be waiting for?”
▶ Play nowA short, replayable piece of interactive fiction: you are a soul at the threshold, and your guide is the Bard — an afterlife customer-service program, incompetent at first and then, unexpectedly, tender. Six acts of small, grounded questions (who you were, what you kept, whom the machine really serves) lead to one last choice: back to Earth, or into the light.
It's button-only — no typing, no wrong answers — but it watches how you move. Its quietest secret is the Vigil: if you simply wait at the first question and refuse to choose, something else begins to happen. Every run also leaves a mark — a procedurally-drawn soul sigil that's yours alone — and the desk remembers you between visits, so a returning soul is greeted differently than a new one.
Neil Gaiman by way of Douglas Adams, on the subject of endings. A content note, because it's honest to give one: the game is about death, and it says so up front and points to real support — nothing here is played for shock.
Controls
- Tap or click — choose a door, or a line of dialogue
- Full keyboard support — Tab and Enter through every choice
- Or don't choose at all, and see what waiting does
Your progress
The desk remembers you between visits — past lives, the sigils you left, and whether it has come to recognize you — all saved on this device via the arcade's save bridge, and forgettable in-game (a deliberate drink from Lethe) whenever you wish.
Accessibility
Button-only interactive fiction; full keyboard play. Optional procedural audio, off by default. Honors prefers-reduced-motion (holds a still frame). Content note: the subject is death and the afterlife; the game carries its own content notice and crisis-support signposting.