Historical Williamsburg Living Narrative

Williamsburg, Virginia. The evening of April 19th, 1775.

You are Nathaniel Blake, a Richmond merchant newly arrived to settle a matter of cargo. You expect a quiet night at the tavern and a quiet morning's business. Within hours, the most consequential act in the colony's recent history will unfold in the dark, and you may be the only man placed to do something about it.

Historical Williamsburg: A Living Narrative is a work of interactive fiction. You explore a faithfully reconstructed colonial capital by typing where you go and what you do, and the town answers in prose. There are no arbitrary puzzles and no single correct path. There is only Williamsburg, its people, and the night that turns the Magazine on Market Square into the center of everything.

A living town, not a stage set

More than three hundred locations are open to you, from the Governor's Palace at the head of the Palace Green to the taverns and shops along Duke of Gloucester Street. Twenty-two people go about their lives on their own schedules: George Wythe and Peyton Randolph receive callers by day and retire at night, tavern keepers fill and empty their rooms, shops open and close by the clock, and the mood of the town shifts as the hours pass. Meals are bought in shillings and pence. Letters can be carried, read, and delivered, or carried too far. Where you happen to be standing when something happens determines what you witness, and the game remembers what you witnessed, not merely what you did.

The night of April 20th

This is the eve of revolution, rendered at the scale of one observant traveler. The events you move through really happened, and they helped set in motion the independence whose 250th anniversary the nation marks this year. That is the occasion for this release.

Free for the 250th

This version of the game is offered free to everyone through the whole of July 2026, in honor of the Semiquincentennial. Original Kickstarter backers receive permanent free access through a download key, with my thanks; you have it for good, regardless of anything that happens to the price later.

If you would like to support more interactive fiction across time, past, present, and future, the tip jar is open and entirely optional. A few dollars helps the next game get made. It is never expected, least of all this month.

What's in the download

The Windows game, plus a Quick Start guide to get you walking the streets in a minute or two, and a complete Command and Argument Reference for when you want to know everything the parser understands.

Running it on Windows

The game is a standalone Windows program. Because it is an independent release and not signed with a commercial certificate, Windows may show a blue "Windows protected your PC" notice the first time you run it. This is the standard warning for any small unsigned program and not a sign of anything wrong. Click "More info," then "Run anyway," and you are in. The game stores its saved games in your own AppData folder and touches nothing else.

Historical Williamsburg Living Narrative. Version 1.50. By Hap Aziz, Ed.D. Copyright 2016, 2026.