BLIND EMPIRE

BLIND EMPIRE - download for best results

a young traveller converses with a dying emperor as a civilisation drifts into its twilight

a dreamy and surreal (horseback-)walking simulator where you'll explore the ruins of the Great Khan's empire - and his mind...

first created for the NFTS Game Poems Jam, September 2026 under the theme, 'The Other One' 

i think i'm actually going to continue working on this, so, if you have time: please consider filling out this short playtest questionnaire [Google Forms] so I can improve the game in future :) 

controls

- WASD for movement, shift to go a bit faster, you know the drill

- space bar to keep reading

- cycle through dialogue options with... you guessed it... WASD (or the arrow keys). space to select 

credits

created by Ciarán Daly, i.e. me. game / level / narrative / animation design plus general architecture and a few Blender assets.

music by Rosie Carr, who kindly provided three tracks off her album 'yew' - you should go buy it then listen to it. it's really really good.

words based on extracts from Italo Calvino's 'Invisible Cities', admittedly not in the right order - you should go buy it then read it. it's really really good.

horse / animation / character / environment assets from Ink Phantom, Imitation Studios, and Blink, thanks guys

AI disclosure

i used Claude Code to help tidy up my code, fix compiler errors, write minor functions and also just throw together some commit summaries for version control (because who's got time for that in a 24 hour jam huh). my impression is that itch.io's 'AI generation disclosure' rule is more for people who prompt engineer an entire Flappy Bird cover in 5 minutes or whatever so i haven't marked it on this project but if i'm wrong please tell me