How to Play

It is a little after three in the morning. The lamp is lit. Somewhere above the ceiling a capsule rattles down the pneumatic tube and lands in the tray with a sound like a coin dropped into a well.

Inside is a theatre ticket. Lisbon, 1958, the stalls, row F. Someone has pressed a violet between its folds, and the violet is still faintly blue.

You turn it over. On the back, in pencil, a time: 21:40, underlined twice. You hold it to the lamp and see that the seat number was once another number, carefully scratched out.

So you ask, out loud, whose it was. The room goes a degree colder. And from somewhere very close, a man says that he never did find out how the play ended.

That is the work. You read what the dead left behind, you speak with them, and between you, a life is put back together. Then you decide where its pieces go next.

The goal is to send each of them home. Every object belongs to a life, and every life is a puzzle shared between keepers: the more of it you bring to light together, the more likely its owner finds peace when the last object reaches the far shore.

Your first night begins with the Bureau's own case, a short case it keeps for new staff. It takes about a quarter of an hour, and every step says what to do, what comes next and why: look at the pieces, speak with the owner, answer the Bureau's questions one at a time, send a piece for an analysis, ask another department, read the Wall, and close the case.

Nothing in it is shared, and its waits last a minute instead of hours. When it is closed, your own work begins, and everything below is what it will be.

The Hollow is a place inside the dream where the dreaming and the dead cross paths. Things wash up there: objects nobody claimed, dreams that keep coming back, ships that have lost their century. The Bureau of the Hollow keeps it all in order, one form at a time. Its staff are called keepers, and every shift is a night shift.

The Hollow Dream is a story game you play in the browser, a few minutes at a time, whenever the night allows. Nothing is timed against you. The Bureau is patient. The dead have waited this long.

A night in the Hollow lasts a real day, and the Bureau turns the page at dawn, 5:00 UTC. Between your visits, the world goes on without you.

You never have to wait for dawn, and you do not have to be there for it. At 5:00 UTC a new night begins: your 40 replies and findings start again, new objects can come down the tube, and shortly after, the Gazette prints the night that ended. You can play right through it, and nothing on your desk is lost. Only two things wait for dawn: once you have used tonight's replies and findings, or received tonight's 4 new objects, more come after it.

• The tube. Work arrives by pneumatic tube, one capsule at a time. Close the browser and the capsules keep coming. Come back and they are waiting in the tray.
• The clocks. An inquiry to the Archive takes hours. An object sent to another keeper takes minutes to cross the building. You set things moving, and the Bureau carries them while you sleep.
• The weather. Every 4 hours the Hollow moves on its own. The tide turns, the fog thickens over the water, and an object left alone too long goes looking for someone else.
• The Gazette. Each morning The Hollow Gazette prints what happened in the night: the lives that went home, and the keepers who helped them. Sooner or later it prints your name.

The Bureau has three departments. You choose an open one as your post on your first evening.

• The Office of Unclaimed Things. A lost and found for the afterlife. Objects the dead left behind arrive at your desk, and you piece together the life each one came from. Open now.
• The Department of Dream Cartography. Its keepers map the dreams that sleepers have again and again. What they chart stays on the map for everyone, under the name of whoever charted it first. It opens when the Bureau writes to say so, and then any keeper may take up a map table, whatever their post.
• The Keeper's Watch. A lighthouse on a shared sea. Ships arrive out of other centuries, and their captains want to know what year it is. It opens when the Bureau writes to say so, and can then be kept beside your desk as a second post.

Whichever post you choose, your first objects find you in the Office of Unclaimed Things.

Other keepers work the same nights. You may never meet them, but you will hold what they held. An object reaches your desk with their notes still on it, and leaves with yours. A life whose pieces are scattered across five desks goes home only if five keepers do their part.

What you bring to light stays on the case file with your name beside it, for everyone who comes after. Nobody can undo your work, and nothing anyone buys changes another keeper's story.

The owners answer when you speak to them. They remember you, and what you told them, across every object of their life. Some will tell you everything. Some will change the subject. One or two will ask you a question back.

They are AI simulations and their replies are written in your language. The Bureau says so plainly, here and beside every conversation. Some lives are sad. None of them is horror. If something weighs on you, set it down. The desk will wait.

Nothing. The game is free, and complete without a purchase. Each night you have 40 replies from owners and findings checked by the Bureau, which is a full shift, and the count starts again at dawn. The Commerce window offers a few optional extras for a currency called Lumens. Nothing in it is random, and none of it is needed to reach the end of a story. Buying Lumens is optional, but it helps keep this project alive.