The Lonesome Road

Welcome to The Lonesome Road. This interactive story allows you to explore the fictional, post apocalyptic town of Baker, once a beacon of hope for the restoration of civilization – now razed by the savage Raiders. Now you must preserve this light. From banding together with the townsfolk of Newton, to taking on the Raiders on your own, or perhaps rising the ranks of the Raiders yourself – you decide how you will make it out of post-apocalyptia, or die trying.

   The player gets to decide which direction they will travel, how they will approach other characters or situations, and what they say during conversation. This is your post-civilized playground. The player gets to decide how civilization will be reborn, or if it is even reborn at all.

   The Lonesome Road aims to provide a fully immersive, detailed story that the player may explore and interact, on their own terms. While a text based medium typically provides more of a literary experience, this story works to make that experience as player-choice based as possible, with multiple different ways to progress through each stage of the story, and even allowing the player to fully explore each stage before making their final choices. The point of The Lonesome Road is not to trap the player based on the decisions they make, rather, it is to allow the player to find their own way out of each situation, and to the next stage. However, these choices are not without consequences – death is a very real possibility in a post-civilized world, and The Lonesome Road reflects this reality.

   This game is an immersive, detail and choice rich world built within a maze. The choices of this world, the ways out of this maze, are all laid out for the player if they can effectively navigate them. It is his or her choice, through exploration, to decide how they would like to escape.

   Almost everyone already knows this setting – a post-civilized, dustbowl world, with no law and order. New York City abandoned, Forests leveled to deserts by global warming or nuclear war. This story does not seek to add to the players pre-existing notion of a post-civilized world setting. Rather, it seeks to use this pre-existing notion of a post-civilized world setting held by the player to allow him or her to explore this world, make their own choices, and experience a story that they became a part of. This is not a post-apocalyptic story that you watch or read, it is a post-apocalyptic story that you participate in.

   I encourage players to explore The Lonesome Road as they see fit, and took take risks when playing this story. This world is meant for exploration with no true dead ends, aside from the literal dead ends that the player can seek out if they so choose. But that is the point of this playable story – you are given a choice at every turn. The Lonesome Road is your choice. I hope you enjoy it as much as I enjoyed dreaming it up.