What is history, the old saying goes, but a fable agreed upon? The irony of that quote bringing up a handful of variants on the same, and attributions to at least three different people, is not lost on us. But the truth of the matter is that history is defined by disagreements – and the fictional village of Tassing, tucked away beneath the Bavarian Alps, is no different. Nearby Kiersau Abbey, which, in an arrangement uncommon to the early modern era, hosts both monks and nuns (less unusually, they’re housed separately), is desperate for funds and keeps raising taxes, arousing the ire of the local peasants; meanwhile, godfearing townsfolk are torn between offering their support to the impending revolt or retaining an uneasy peace. No wonder cracks are appearing in Tassing’s canvas, the pentimenti of other stories and secrets visible to anyone who looks closely enough to pick at them.

This particular fable begins with an act of erasure. If director Josh Sawyer’s initial pitch (described in E377 as ‘Night In The Woods meets The Name Of The Rose’) is an unimprovable distillation, we’re reminded here of another recent indie game: Dreamfeel’s If Found. Rather than turning a diary into a palimpsest, as you use a stone to scrape away the calligraphic text of this thick tome there’s a frisson that accompanies it, the suggestion that what follows is nothing less than an act of rewriting history. It’s amplified by the fact that everything plays out within those pages, a reminder that what you do here is being etched into the annals.