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The King Of Shreds And Patches is an interactive supernatural mystery by Jimmy Maher, set in the Elizabethan Era. It was inspired by the Call of Cthulhu adventure with the same name.

You, respectable printer Robert Fletcher, are invited to dine with your old friend John Croft, a dissolute theatrical type newly returned from his years abroad in Heidelberg. But by the time you've arrived Croft hangs dead from a rafter, with a mysterious sigil painted on the wall, and surrounded by scattered pages from several different manuscripts as well as a diary that tells an ominously suggestive story. Before you have long to unravel the fate of your friend, you receive a letter from your lady friend, Lucy Henry, asking you if you'd please investigate what's become of her cousin Marijne...

Available for free download here.


The King Of Shreds And Patches provides examples of:

  • Ambiguously Gay: A few characters associated with the theater and similar disreputable professions, like David Moore. Croft and Marlowe appear to be unambiguously gay or bi, however.
  • Apocalyptic Log: A lot of the writings found throughout the game have this flavor.
  • Bedlam House: The Bedlam, as a matter of fact.
  • Disguised in Drag: One way to get past the Tower guards.
  • Dismantled MacGuffin: The manuscript pages.
  • Driven to Suicide: Croft, and if you're really unlucky, the PC.
  • Eldritch Abomination: The King In Yellow(/e).
  • Go Mad from the Revelation: In scads. This is already the fate of Moore, and takes effect on the player character if you tarry too long at the Hamlet premiere.
  • Guide Dang It!: A few moments savor of this, including maneuvering the boat.
  • Have a Nice Death: Some seriously creepy ways of dying in this game, with appropriately horrific and on occasion darkly comic flavor text.
  • Historical Domain Character: William Shakespeare, Christopher Marlowe, and English occultist John Dee all make appearances. The premiere of Shakespeare’s Hamlet is the backdrop for supernatural interference. He is one of the the playwrights involved in the efforts to reconstruct The King In Yellowe.
  • Humanoid Abomination: The King in Yellow, of course, as well as another manifestation resembling a jester. Loosely resembling a jester.
  • Human Sacrifice: Poor Marijne. Lucy, too, as well as the anonymous men and women in the sacrifices taking place under the Tower.
  • Insane Equals Violent: Some of those who have been touched by the Yellow King are a danger to others as well as to themselves.
  • Magical Incantation: Both longer passages of text in English with sinister effects and a plot-important passage in what may or may not actually be Ancient Greek.
  • Malevolent Masked Men: The sinister priests involved in the conspiracy's occult ceremonies.
  • Mineral MacGuffin: Numerous precious (or simply magically-significant) stones with various uses and fixtures, including some color-coded ones employed in a significant puzzle in the last act.
  • Mistaken for Cheating: A non-humorous example; some of the anxiety surrounding Lucy's disappearance is complicated by the thought that she may have gone willingly, or believed she was going willingly with the promise of romance.
  • Not What It Looks Like: Dee's presence at the occult rite under the Tower of London.
  • Old Flame: Fletcher and Lucy, with the added complication that by Elizabethan standards she's an Old Maid and, though fond of Fletcher, would really rather be writing plays herself.
  • Secret Circle of Secrets: The cult operating in London.
  • Shout-Out to Shakespeare: The title, and many of the epigraphs within the game.
  • Songs in the Key of Lock: The key to Moore's fractured mind, as he is a former musician, takes the form of a familiar tune.
  • Suddenly-Harmful Harmless Object: The mirror in Barker's house.
  • The Plague: An epidemic is ravaging London at the time of the game's central events, worrying some and leaving others unfazed while producing an atmosphere of mounting fear and paranoia. Fletcher is blighted with the outward appearance of a plague victim after the failed summoning at the Hamlet premiere, leaving him an outcast.
  • Tome of Eldritch Lore: The fragmented manuscript of The King In Yellowe serves as one of these.
  • Wizard Beard: John Dee.

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