TEXTDEAD

You wake up and check your phone. That's the game.

Thirteen conversations are waiting. Your mum wants to know whether you've eaten. Sam is bringing the bad wine. Dave from work says Monday is fine. The dentist is confirming Thursday at 2:15.

The rest are not from people you know.

TEXTDEAD happens entirely inside a messages app. You read, you reply, and what you say decides what comes back. There is no inventory, no puzzle and no way to lose. There is a phone at four percent, a clock stopped somewhere around three in the morning, and a field behind it that you should probably keep an eye on.

Getting it running

Download, unzip anywhere, run TEXTDEAD.exe. Windows only, about 100 MB unzipped.

Windows will probably say "Windows protected your PC". The game isn't code-signed — that's what Windows says about anything unsigned from somebody small, and it isn't a virus warning. Click More info, then Run anyway. Or don't; no hard feelings.

Some things worth knowing

It remembers what you said. Tell your mum at nine in the morning that you've eaten, and someone at half past three will bring it up. Be helpful to your neighbour, and find out later who she told.

Read it twice. One path per conversation per playing. Replies you've already explored come up dimmed the next time, so a second run is a different game rather than the same one again.

The conversations are text files. They sit next to the game in TEXTDEAD_Data/StreamingAssets/contacts/ — one plain markdown file each, which you can open in Notepad. Add your own, name it in _index.md, restart. No tools, no rebuild.

(The installer defaults to a per-user install so those files stay editable. If you choose to install for all users instead, they land in Program Files and Windows won't let you save changes without administrator rights.)

--- name: Mrs. Kelby (Next Door) avatar: 🪟 time: 2:04 AM unread: true ---  > did you leave your back door open? < no? > your back door has been open for two hours  * how do you know? -> know * i'll go and shut it -> shut  ## know > i can see it from my kitchen

> is them, < is you, * is a reply you can tap, and ## is where that reply goes. If you write one you're pleased with, open an issue — I'd like to read it.