The Fog Knows Your Name

A text-only teen horror novel

The Fog Knows Your Name is a text-based interactive novel of about 300,000 words, written by Yeonsoo Julian Kim and published by Choice of Games. There are no graphics and no sound effects, so the story reaches you through its prose and through the choices you make as you go.

The setting is a small town where people die whenever the fog comes in. You are in your senior year of high school, and the listing rates the app 12+. It is built for readers who want a long branching story in place of visuals.

Solving murders and clearing your name

The story starts six months after Rex Keller was found dead, and you were the last person to see him alive. His sister Ennis, along with half the town, believes you killed him. Clearing your name means working through the case.

Solving the murders is one of the main goals, and the listing says the clues are waiting in the fog. You and your friends have to unravel the fog's mysteries in time, or the ghosts will kill you.

Your choices control the story, so the route you take through the case is yours to set.

How the fog decides who lives

In the town's accounts, the fog kills people who have wronged someone without confessing to it. Anyone who admits to causing harm can walk through the fog untouched, while the liars die.

The listing says no one knows exactly how or why the fog works, and the town offers three explanations. One says the land is punishing the colonizers, one says the Devil is collecting souls, and one says the fog drives people to violence against others and themselves.

The dead haunt you, Ennis and your friends at school. Among the choices, you can stop the thing in the fog and exorcise the ghosts that haunt the town.

Romances, friendships and your character

You can play as female, male or non-binary. The listing also gives orientation options of gay, straight, bi, ace, aromantic and poly.

Romance storylines run with both friends and enemies, so the people around you shape the story as much as the fog does. Your friends are part of the mystery too, since the ghosts haunt them as well as you.

Endings: protect the town or take revenge

The listing frames the closing choices as protecting the town that despises you or taking vengeance against it.

When the dead speak, you decide whether to give them what they want or put an end to them. Entering the fog and dying is also listed as a choice in its own right.