The Archivist and the Revolution
Content Warnings
optional sexual content, violence, illness, death, transphobia, homophobia. Content warnings included in-game.
A woman alone in a dying city, on a dying world. What will be left when it all falls apart?
The Archivist and the Revolution is a slice-of-life/romance/history simulator set in a far-future sealed city that has undergone cycles of destruction and revival. You play as Em, a middle-aged woman who is no longer an archivist, as she struggles with rent payments, chronic illness, and the remnants of past relationships.
~60k words, 30 minutes - 1 hour to reach an ending.
Awards
- 4th out of 70 at IFComp 2022
- IGF Honorable Mention for Excellence in Narrative
- Nominated for Best Game, Best Setting, Best NPCs, Best PC, and Best Implementation at the 2022 XYZZY Awards
- Winner, Outstanding Worldbuilding, Outstanding Science Fiction Game at the 2022 IFDB Awards
- Shortlisted at the Queer Games Festival
- 28th place in the 2023 Interactive Fiction Top 50
Reviews
"An imaginative world with interesting speculative fiction chops, well-realized characters, and a presentation of what it’s like to be understatedly but overwhelmingly oppressed." - Lucian Smith
"Suffice to say The Archivist and the Revolution is brilliant, desperately sad, mechanically detailed and set in a stunningly realized world that comes to life in suicidally unpleasant ways." - Kit Riemer
"the way I was able to retroactively construct a clear, clean narrative arc out of so many randomly-generated pieces, quite sure that I missed more words than I saw, was little short of magical." - Mike Russo
"This story seeps into your bones and lives there." - Arlo Elm
"Like all the best speculative fiction I found the allegory at once unsettlingly relatable, as it could be for any subject of late era capitalism, but also profoundly illuminating about existences beyond my own." - Caliban
"This is effective but not enticing. There's stuff to discover, down in the depths of the DNA archives; but any subject you care about will cost you more than you can afford." - Andrew Plotkin
Download
Click download now to get access to the following files:
Development log
- V2.3 - A Final Update (For Now)Feb 15, 2024
- Awards (and other updates)Jan 17, 2024
- V2.2 - minor updatesOct 13, 2023
- Bug fixSep 22, 2023
- The Music UpdateSep 08, 2023
- PostmortemMay 17, 2023
- V2.0 - Post-comp releaseMay 15, 2023
Comments
Log in with itch.io to leave a comment.
Honestly, i came with zero expectations and this game still managed to surprise me in how well written and real it is, i might even start liking it more than the Social Democracy game
This game is genuinely incredible and I don't have the words to adequately describe how hard it hit me. The way you write is fantastic, the characters are all painfully relatable, and the world is incredibly immersive given how small a lens we see it through. Great work, it's been stuck with me for ages.
Thank you, I really appreciated your review!
I first played this about a year ago, and I haven't stopped thinking about it since. This is easily the most profound piece of IF I've ever read, and it has genuinely changed me. Thank you.
Thank you so much!
omg, I love this so much! I genuinely feel for all of these characters.
but, is there a way just to read all of the paths? I'm like on my 5th ending, and it gets a bit tedious reading the same prose to get to the different stuff.
Thank you! There’s no skip feature, but you can save before an ending to see other options.
Working my way through this, it hits home despite its scifiness.
as usual beautiful work!
Show post...
I really liked this game! There are some issues I wanted to point out however.
-It is unclear to what point our main character is tired, so I can't know at what point
she's closer toa breakdown
-I dislike the way the endings work, if I decide to re-establish a relationship with someone else, I can get an ending with them sure, but that won't allow me to do things like joining the organization fighting for equality, so that kinda makes me go through a complicated procedure of intentionally not being able to pay rent after knowing of the organization while not havinga breakdownin the process, which is kind of complicated and gets me to another point.-If I have
a breakdownand the other version of me comes in to help me, if I refuse her help, the game ends, instead of continuing as if nothing happened, why is that? You could've just made it so that after drinking that cup I would be back to normal and after refusing to travel with my other me, I would be back in the apartment as if nothing happened, why leave the game in such an ambiguous ending instead?Lastly, considering the open endings, it really made me think this game has potential for a sequel, but for some reason you would rather make a spin-off of the archivist world set in somewhere else? Why is that? I really would like to see the continuation of the story of our unfortunate archivist in her fight against a unfair and unjust world.
This game is so good it left me feeling awed...😭Which engine did you use to make this? I'd like to try it out
Thanks! The engine used is dendry.
Thank you! I tried learning dendry, but unfortunately I am having some issues with downloading, would you mind lending me some help? (ps I checked the guide and tried multiple different methods, but they all fail...T^T
hello i love this story so much, coming back to play it again. much love from a fellow trans person<3
This is so good. I saw every plot element mirrored in our real world... Very grim, but life goes on.
Also, music is good and fits the mood of the story well.
teared up multiple times playing this because it hit home. i wanted to check out the other endings for myself but i supposed i dont have the guts to. thank you for creating this game
Is this part of the pageantverse (em - emily)
Em is kind of an AU version of Emily. But I don’t think it’s part of the Pageantverse, not yet, anyway.
Show post...
Hey Autumn, just wanted to notify you that I left a review of the archivist game with some criticism.
Show post...
Sorry for bothering again but ocukd you please look at my review?
Thank you for playing and reviewing the game. For what it’s worth, I’m not really updating the game anymore.
Show post...
Thx for replying!
I know the game won't be updated anymore, but I was wondering why a potential new game in this universe won't be a sequel to the storyline of this game.
"The Archivist and the Revolution" got reviewed by the arcane cache, a underground blog for underground games:
„The game and its world are well created – not only in the sense that it contains many creative ideas that go beyond the (also present) science-fiction cliches, but also since it does a really good job to depict the struggles and predicaments of the protagonist – the descriptions and structures feel inherent logical and very natural, and even though many of today’s many pressing matters are thematised, it never feels tokenistic doing so ... The Archivist and the Revolution“ is a well realized, highly political piece of hyperlink fiction that doesn’t need to hide behind most of the contemporary commercial science fiction stories I’ve read in the past few years; its direct language, its naturalist approach, the – rather pronounced – gameplay elements, and its clear political agenda make it enjoyable to underground gaming enthusiasts and a larger audience alike."
Well done!
https://thunderperfectwitchcraft.org/arcane_cache/2024/04/10/the-archivist-and-t...
Profoundly sad but showing the important angle, it hurts but it needs to exist. А bit confusing with names being just single letters, but you know what i don't even care, bc the rest of it is amazing.
this game is freakin amazing. ending i got made me feel like a cowardly slimeball. might not be able to play again. 10/10
such a beautiful, heartbreaking story
This was painful to play through, but it was also incredibly cathartic. Thanks for making this.
Got the first ending. I feel like even when this pandemic ends, this game would remain more and more relevant. Thanks for making it and the postmortem is great.
I loved it! Got the 2nd ending! I don’t know if I want to try others, i’m sure that’s the one I want!
cyberpunk settings (if that's even an accurate description) are so cool. very immersive story/game. would love to see more in this particular setting
Now that rating is over, I can comment here and tell you how much your story dragged me into it and left me memories I’ll cherish for a long time. Thank you for this precious piece of art
I love this