Hermes Library

Hermes Library is a narrative game set in the main library of Hephaestus University, the most famous university in the United Nation of Europa. You play as Rainn Echo, a junior who becomes the new librarian at the front desk. Alongside your daily work, you investigate mysterious incidents at the university by gathering information hidden in books and helping a detective and a reporter uncover the truth.

Library duties

You help students, faculty members and alumni check out and return books, working morning and afternoon shifts each day. For a checkout, you scan the reader’s ID and check their records to confirm they are using their own card and are authorized to borrow. You enter the book’s title and due date, approve the transaction and give the reader their ID, book and printed receipt.

Anyone can return a book on a reader’s behalf by placing it in the return slot. You scan the book, check whether it is overdue and, if it is, calculate and issue a fine slip. Your conversations with readers also reveal details about their lives.

Campus news and mysteries

A daily-updated bulletin board shares news about important incidents, advertises events on and off campus, and carries descriptions and recruitment notices from clubs and student organizations. Notes hidden in some of the books reveal clues about events at the university, as well as the people who left them.

The mysteries include rumors that an award-winning professor has acted inappropriately toward students, the suspicious summer death of a philosophy PhD student, and the repeated theft of body parts preserved in university labs. You collect information from the notes and help a detective and a reporter investigate whether the rumors are true, whether the student died by suicide or was killed, and what the thief is trying to achieve. The incidents also prompt theories and debates among people in the library.

Relationships and campus life

You can choose to continue conversations with special people whose notes resonate with you, and may develop deeper relationships with them. During lunch breaks, you talk with your best friend, Lilith Puck, at the Hermes Library Cafe about the day’s news. On weekends, you can join her in activities such as parades, club fairs and exhibitions, featuring novelties and innovations from the steampunk world.