An Interactive Puzzle Novel
Vandoras
For twenty years, Van made things work.
Then a peculiar lockbox recognized him.
Now everything else wants to.
Teasers.
A craftsman in a pre-industrial city opens a fouled lock and something changes. Not the lock. Him.
Text-primary interactive puzzle novel for iOS. Choice-driven narrative with puzzle interludes. Three factions, three endings, one character whose gift will either serve the world or unmake part of it.
Cosmic order is not self-sustaining. It is maintained. Three factions want Van for different reasons — and only one of them is honest about what the work will cost him.
Sparse illustration, original score, synthesized voice narration. The game is the story, not the puzzles. Van's register is plain and precise, and so is the game's.
Concordance. Ledger. Unwinding.
One playthrough won't show you all of it.
Three languages. One vocabulary.
01
Picking Locks
Van's oldest vocabulary. Tap, drag, set. But these pins have learned to resist — and the mechanism he's working knows who's asking.
Tap · Drag · Tension02
Reassembling Gear Trains
Ratios, flows, configurations. Not every gear belongs in every arrangement. Find the routing that holds — and understand what it means when one doesn't.
Rotate · Connect · Configure03
Aligning Glyphwork
The heaviest language. Sixteen glyphs, relational constraints, one valid configuration. You don't always know which answer you're giving until the frame closes.
Glyphs · Constraints · OrderThe story you play.
The Awakening
A routine commission. A lockbox that responds differently than it should. Van opens something he can't close. Three factions arrive — each with a different story about what he is and what he owes them.
Ch 1–3 · Harrowmere · Tutorial PuzzlesThe Reckoning
Six chapters across failing mines, besieged keeps, and Concordance archives. Van helps people whose problems resist conventional solutions — and learns that his gift has been tracked for seven generations. At the end, he chooses.
Ch 4–9 · Six Locations · Faction ChoicesThe Consequence
Three separate stories. Three distinct endings. One shared crisis at Vael Moren — an ancient stability node failing on its own schedule — before the tracks diverge into conclusions that don't resemble each other.
Ch 10–12 · Three Tracks · Three EndingsYour choices are Van's choices.
Vandoras has no single ending. Every conversation shifts where your loyalty seems to lie, and the choices you make across all twelve chapters carry you toward one of three very different conclusions — different confrontations, different costs, different endings entirely.
The Concordance
The old order, maintained.
The Concordance wants the old order maintained, quietly, by people who understand what happens when it isn't. They will court Van. They won't lie outright.
Order · Continuity · Quiet AuthorityThe Ledger
The same mechanism, different owners.
The Ledger wants the same mechanism working for different owners, and has never much cared what it costs anyone else. They will court Van. They won't lie outright.
Leverage · Ambition · CostThe Unwinding
Stopped, for good.
The Unwinding wants it stopped for good, and has its own reasons for believing that stopping it is mercy. They will court Van. They won't lie outright.
Conviction · Mercy · Reckoning"You don't build machines that work.— The Lockbox, Chapter 1
You impose order on chaos.
You are the gear that turns the cosmic clockwork."
Coming to iOS.
An interactive puzzle novel for readers who want the story to have consequences.
TestFlight beta is open ahead of launch. Email support@lesliestreetstudio.com to request an invite.