A writing guide for a game where the horror isn’t what happens but what the player comes to understand. Strange Library is a cozy horror deckbuilder set in a private lending library. The previous librarian left detailed notes, a locked room, and a community of collectors who expect things that aren’t in any job description. The voice might be the most important design decision in the entire project.
The voice
Second person, present tense. “You follow Marion’s second catalog. The books go where the system says they go. Three of them were already there.” The narrator is the library itself — observing, cataloging, never reacting. The voice is precise, controlled, and deliberately flat. It doesn’t explain. It doesn’t dramatize. It presents evidence and trusts the player to draw conclusions.
The ratio seems specific. Two or three longer sentences that establish context or build a chain of reasoning. Then a short sentence — often a fragment — that delivers the conclusion. The short sentence is never decorated. “The dates match. The names match.” “The manuscript records everything.” “Three of them were already there.”
Objects as language
Physical details replace emotional language. A cracked spine signals obsession — someone opened this book hundreds of times. A sharpened pencil signals compulsion — someone annotated while reading, every time. A locked room signals that someone decided what’s inside matters more than any other consideration, including access. The writing never says “this is disturbing” or “this feels wrong.” The objects carry the weight. The writing arranges them.
The Harlan Collection is climate-controlled. Museum-grade preservation. Glass-fronted mahogany cases. UV-filtered lighting. From the outside, an unremarkable terraced house. From the inside, a space that takes its contents more seriously than any museum takes its collection. The gap between exterior and interior might be the first signal that something is wrong — but the wrongness is expressed entirely through physical description. Not through commentary.
The unsaid
The voice cuts before the revelation. “Marion’s catalog entries for the basement stop on March 14th. The basement is still there. The catalog is not.” The player knows what this means. The writing never says it. The most powerful moments in the game might be the moments where the voice stops.
Paradox is stated plainly. “The book is on your desk. You shelved it yesterday. It is on your desk.” No explanation. No ellipsis. No question mark. The narrator observes. The impossibility is presented as fact. The player’s discomfort comes from the flatness of the delivery — from the voice’s refusal to acknowledge that anything unusual has occurred.
Humor
Dry and structural. Never a punchline. Never at someone’s expense. “A comedy. It was funny once. The underlined passages are not the jokes.” The humor appears when the voice treats something absurd with the same precision it treats everything else. The contrast might be the comedy. The voice doesn’t change register. The world changes around it.
Why this voice
Every horror game has a voice. Most of them might be wrong — overwrought, atmospheric in ways that telegraph the scares, musical in ways that prepare the player for what comes next. The Strange Library voice does none of this. It’s a catalog. A record. An accounting of what’s in the building and where it goes. The horror emerges from the content, not the delivery. The delivery is the same whether describing a rare first edition or an impossibility. That consistency might be the design.
See also: Your [Brand Voice](/writing/brand-voice-machine-readable) Must Be [Machine-Readable](/writing/designing-for-machines-that-read) or It Dies) — the rationale for serializing voice.