The Forgotten C 2020

The Forgotten City unfolds as a tense, time-bending mystery where a small underground settlement is held together by a single, chilling rule. The story begins when a player character is rescued from floating down the Tiber by a young woman named Karen, who tasks them with finding another survivor, Al Worth. Al vanished while probing ancient Roman ruins that conceal a living city filled with golden statues that resemble ordinary people. The quest leads the player to Al’s location, where tragedy awaits: he has taken his own life, leaving a note that warns against engaging with a mysterious portal hidden within the ruins. This portal yanks the player back in time to a real-time replica of the city, where the mysteries deepen and the stakes grow higher.

In this revived world, a farmer named Galerius guides the player to the magistrate Sentius. Sentius explains that the city is tiny—less than two dozen souls—and saved from collapse by a brutal law called the Golden Rule: if any resident sins, the entire community will be transformed into gold. Statues from former settlements litter the landscape, a grim reminder of civilizations that once faltered. Sentius, however, already foresees the Rule’s breach later that day and has prepared a ritual to Proserpina that could open a portal back to the start of the day if the rule is broken. The only way out for the player is to engineer a time paradox: if the Golden Rule remains unbroken, Sentius loses his motive to perform the ritual and the player can return to their own time.

The game then reveals four possible endings, each unfolding through the player’s choices and interactions within the loop.

• In the first ending, the player shoots Sentius using a weapon from the present or a golden bow capable of turning anything it strikes into gold. The act prevents the ritual, but it creates a paradox that traps the player and Al in the underground ruins, where they ultimately perish together.

• The second and third endings hinge on the discovery of Sentilla, Sentius’ long-hidden daughter, imprisoned in a cistern above the city and connected to a hidden aqueduct. Releasing Sentilla offers a chance to escape, but doing so would violate the Golden Rule, and Sentius has confined Sentilla precisely to prevent that. If Sentilla is freed, Sentius reveals that he has preserved memories across countless loops and never intended for the protagonist to foil the Rule. He views the time-loop device as a path to immortality, while Al has spent thousands of days chasing the same outcome. Sentilla’s revenge comes when she sets Sentius ablaze, breaking the Golden Rule and triggering a time paradox. The second ending sees Sentilla escape alone, while the third allows Sentilla to flee with others from the community. In both cases, the player and Al return to the living present.

• The fourth, canonical ending shifts the perspective to the Underworld. To reach it, the player must discuss how different individuals arrived at the community with the Vestal Virgin Equitea. The journey reveals that the river at the game’s start is not the Tiber but the Styx, and Karen’s name echoes Charon. Equitea tasks the player with collecting four plaques representing the four cultures that successively built atop one another—Romans, Greeks, Egyptians, and Sumerians—each layer concealing the earlier ones. When the Grand Temple is finally opened, Pluto, a member of a highly advanced alien race, emerges. Centuries ago, these beings visited Earth and were worshipped as gods; most chose to depart, deeming humanity inherently violent and sinful. Proserpina, another alien who chose to live among humans, became human in defiance of Jupiter, who forbade her return to their homeworld. Pluto bets Jupiter that humans can live a full year without sin, a wager that sparks the legendary Golden Rule and the city’s creation. Pluto also minted one thousand silver coins, talismans that could draw their bearers to the afterlife within the city.

The canonical ending presents a choice: either persuade Pluto that enforcing the Golden Rule creates sin, or intimidate him with the golden bow to suspend the rule. Either path triggers a time paradox and returns the entire community—and Al and the player—to the living world, but in the present day rather than the era of the Romans. The sole exception is Sentius, left as the lone golden statue to mark his crimes. The epilogue then shows the living residents of the city gathered in a present-day museum, alongside Proserpina, who has whispered to the player throughout. In a final twist, the game reveals that all statues, not just those encountered in the final city, have been returned to mortal form and transported forward to the present.

Throughout the journey, the player confronts the paradox at the heart of the city: a place where a stringent moral code sustains a fragile population, where time can be bent or broken, and where the line between salvation and damnation is continually rewritten by choice, memory, and the lure of immortality. The Forgotten City blends mystery, philosophy, and speculative sci-fi to ask whether humanity’s insistence on virtue can coexist with the temptations of power, and whether any leap across time can ever truly erase the consequences of a single, decisive act.