Gentle reader, a lantern has gone out. On All Hallows’ Eve, 1888, the Great Lantern upon the Clock Tower of Tripwick Hollow guttered and died, and every Ward Lantern in the town followed it. The fog rolled off the fields, the pumpkins split open and began to crawl, and the clock began, very slowly, to count towards thirteen. You are the last Lamplighter. We have built you a game in which to do something about it.

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What Manner of Game Is This?

Tripwick Hollow is a top-down, twin-stick horde-survival game, and it plays entirely in your browser: no download, no install, no charge. You move with one hand, aim and fire with the other, and try to stay alive while an ever-larger crowd of grinning jack-o’-lantern monsters, restless ghosts and the risen dead closes in on every side.

Everything you slay leaves behind a Soul Wisp. Gather enough and you rise a level, choosing one of three cards that make your Lamplighter a little stronger and a good deal stranger. Your relics do the rest: orbiting candles, flasks of holy water, familiar crows, a thorn rosary, boomerang scythes, lightning rods and more, all of which fight for you without being asked. Master one, pair it with its trinket, open a Coffin, and watch it evolve into something far worse for the horde.

Somewhere in each district lie the four parts of the Iron Effigy. Gather them, and a towering engine of brass and fury will rise to fight at your side. Be warned that it does not last for ever.

Twelve pumpkins for the harvest queen, and one left for the Hollow, so the fields stay green.— Tripwick children’s rhyme

Nine Districts, Nine Horrors

Each of the nine districts is a place to survive, a set of lanterns to relight and a boss to put down. Fight through three Acts, face what waits at the end, and light the Ward Lantern before the thirteenth bell tolls.

1. I.Harvest Market & Pumpkin FieldsOld Thresher
2. II.St. Morrow’s ChurchyardThe Sexton
3. III.WitchwoodMother Bramble
4. IV.Ravenscar AsylumThe Alienist
5. V.Blackwater MillThe Miller
6. VI.Fishmonger’s WharfCaptain Brine
7. VII.The CatacombsThe Bone Colossus
8. VIII.The Clock TowerThe Bellkeeper
9. IX.Tripwick ManorThe Hollow Lord

Three Lamplighters

• Edith Thorne, the Lamplighter. Steady and sure, armed with the Lantern Repeater, whose every tenth shot is a piercing bolt of flame.
• Father Mordecai Vane, the Defrocked Priest. Sturdier and slower, he swings the Censer Flail-Gun, and when he stands still the ground beneath him is consecrated and burns what comes near. He joins you once the first district is relit.
• Silas Crowe, the Gravedigger. He carries the Grave-Salt Shotgun, earns more Shillings than anyone and finds more in every Coffin. He joins you after the second district.

Between expeditions you return to the Lamplighters’ Lodge, where the Old Shillings you collect buy permanent upgrades. The tale may be played gently by Candlelight, harder by Nightfall or sternly by Midnight, and those who see it through to the end are rewarded with trials fit for the truly stubborn.

How It Is Played

Tripwick Hollow plays with a mouse and keyboard or a game controller.

With a controller, the sticks move and aim, the right trigger fires, and the face and shoulder buttons blink, cast your charm and relight the lanterns. The menus work with a controller too, so you need never put it down.

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Also New: The TripGeo Arcade

Until now, most of our projects lived at tripgeo.com: the daily puzzles, the map games and the city tools. Tripwick Hollow is a different sort of beast. It is bigger and longer, it has music and monsters and a great many paintings, and it deserved a house of its own.

So we have opened one. arcade.tripgeo.com is the new home of TripGeo’s larger games and stories, all of them free, all of them played in the browser. Two are open at the time of writing:

• Tripwick Hollow, the game you have just been reading about.
• The Automata, a saga in four plates about four robots who have spent four hundred years keeping a house spotless for humans who never came home. Begin with At Leisure, step into At Home, follow the gramophone Abroad, and walk the Sleeper Homeward.

The Arcade is brand new, and more cabinets are on their way. Your progress in Tripwick Hollow is kept in your own browser, so you may stop and return whenever the fog allows.