The Ghost and the Golem

The Ghost and the Golem is a 450,000-word interactive historical fantasy novel set in 1881, in a Jewish village on the border of Poland and Ukraine. Through hundreds of choices, you decide how to protect the village from the antisemitic riots spreading across the Russian empire—and what happens to its people and to your own heart. The game is entirely text-based, with no graphics or sound effects.

The village and the amulet

Village life includes arranged marriages, klezmer music at weddings, reconciliations after feuds, gossip, prayer in the synagogue and study of holy texts. A magic amulet in your pocket shows visions of a future in which the village is burning, with blood, bodies, gunshots and marching songs. You must uncover how that future could come to pass and decide how to stop it.

Choose your allies

You can try to persuade the local Christian peasants or the Czarist garrison to protect the village, or seek help from bandits and anarchists in the wild forest. A demonic sheyd may offer you a bargain, and you decide what you will do to save the people you love. You can also search for the amulet's previous owner, an academy exile who studied forbidden texts and has gone missing, and try to discover what powers he unleashed and whether he knows a secret name.

A close friend has built a golem, a clay creature stronger than a dozen soldiers, which awaits animation with forbidden power and a secret name. You decide whether to bring it to life—and whether it will defend the village or help destroy it.

Your life and beliefs

You can play as a man, woman or nonbinary person; cis or trans, intersex or not; and gay, straight, bi or asexual. You can accept an arranged marriage, find love on your own terms with a childhood friend or an anarchist musician, and pursue music—earning a standing ovation or failing badly enough to be pelted with potatoes. You can hold to your people's traditions or pursue modern ideas.

The Unseen World holds ghosts, dybbuks, prophetic visions and the golem. You can explore its secrets or ascend to a mystical plane in search of the universe's greatest secrets. When demonic spirits influence you, you can give in, resist through faith or Enlightenment skepticism, or help them find their way to the gates of repentance. You can confront antisemitic agitators, angry peasants, Czarist soldiers and hostile bandits to defend the village, or be defeated and flee in the aftermath of violence.