Maximilien

Boston, 1926.

You wake up with a name that feels borrowed.

A city on edge. A serial killer they call the Ogre of South Boston.

A past you can't entirely explain.

And something — something that doesn't belong to daylight — pressing against the edge of your thoughts.

A psychological horror novel that takes itself seriously.

MAXIMILIEN is a literary interactive novel set in 1920s Boston. Part investigation, part occult descent, part something you won't have a word for when it's over.

You play Maximilien Cornwell, a psychology student trying to understand what's happening to the city — and what's already happened to him.

The more you look, the less certain you become of what you're seeing.

What awaits you

• A branching narrative — over 500 passages, 1,755 conditional story states

• 4 routes, 8 endings — different routes reveal fundamentally different truths

• A real investigation system — clues, objects, a hand-drawn map of Boston, intuitions

• Mental health mechanics — your sanity affects what you see, what choices appear, what version of events reaches you

• A police suspicion system — the Ogre investigation runs parallel to your own

• Day/night cycles, limited action economy — time is pressure

• Original score by Gaëtan Larant, illustrated sequences by Nicolas "Solynk" Thonney

Set in 1920s Boston

The city breathes occultism. Prohibition-era streets, university halls that smell of old paper and older secrets, the harbor, the tenements of South Boston, the places that don't appear on any official map.

The writing is dense, literary, and precise — psychological horror in the tradition of slow dread, not gore. Influences run through Lovecraft, Poe, and the French roman noir. But this is something of its own.

If you have played  Vampire: The Masquerade — Night Road and others sequels, or found yourself unable to sleep after a short story with no obvious monster — this was made for you.

Seven years of work

I'm Yohan Dupuy. I spent seven years writing and developing Maximilien — including three weeks in the Massachusetts state archives researching real cases that fed two of the four routes. The game is in Twine/SugarCube, written in French, fully translated to English by Lucia Desogus, illustrated by Solynk, scored by Gaëtan Larant.

It is unapologetically literary. It will not be for everyone. If it's for you, you'll know within the first hour.

Technical

• Available in English and French

• Playable on Windows and Linux (Android version coming after release)

• Keyboard and mouse — no controller required

• Approximate playtime : 4–6 hours per route, 15–20 hours for full completion

• Age rating : 16+

• No AI-generated  — all writing is made by human authors

• Content warning : psychological horror, themes of dissociation, occultism, criminal violence (non-graphic), mental illness

The investigation begins October 26, 2026.

Wishlist now — and don't play it too late at night...