THE STORY
A father. A phone call. A Guide that was never meant to save him. What kind of experience is this? What is the player doing? What is the "Guide"? Why should the player care? What feels wrong?
THE PREMISE
You are Mohsen. An Iranian father. A nature explorer. A man who loves his 9-year-old daughter more than anything in the world. One night, after a bitter argument with his wife, Mohsen drives out to clear his head. His car runs out of gas on a desolate desert highway. He stops at a lone gas station in the middle of nowhere. While filling the tank, his phone rings. The voice on the other end is familiar. Painfully familiar. It's the man his wife left him for years ago — a man with a dark past, a man who was once something else entirely. A man known only as the Booklet Man. The Notebook Keeper. He holds secrets. "If you're a good father," the voice says, "come save your daughter." Mohsen rushes to leave, desperate to reach his car and find her. But before he can, someone strikes him from behind. Darkness takes him. He wakes in an abandoned hospital. Lights flicker. Hallways breathe. And somewhere in this decaying place, his daughter is waiting. The Guide is watching. The Guide is leading. But the Guide was wrong from the very beginning.
“The guide said the cabin was safe. The lock on the outside suggested otherwise.”
— Field Notes, Day 3
THE GUIDE
It speaks through notes, signs, voices on the radio. It marks the way with paint, with lights, with breadcrumbs of certainty. You follow because the alternative is the unknown. And the unknown is where they are. But this Guide — the Booklet Man, the Notebook Keeper — Mohsen knows what a wretch he truly is. He scattered prayer pages (dua-nevisi) throughout the hospital, the courtyard, the surrounding environments — blackened family names, Iranian tradition twisted into keys. His motive? Twisted amusement. A revenge for a past that already happened.
THE LOOP
Mohsen is trapped in a loop that never ends — because from that very blow, the world went dark. It's unclear if this is reality or not. The Guide was wrong from the beginning. Every instruction is a lie. Every marker a potential trap. The prayer pages are the keys to his daughter's salvation — if he can find them before the bitterness takes root forever.
⚠ PATH DIVERGENCE DETECTED
The guide has corrected itself. Proceed with caution.
THE CHOICE
How far do you follow before you stop? What happens when the Guide leads you somewhere the Guide itself warns you about? The path was never yours. But the choice to leave it... that might be the only thing that is. Mohsen must give everything for his daughter. Otherwise, a bitterness will take root that he never wanted... This path is just a wrong guide...
The Wrong Guide is a single-player, offline, story-driven psychological horror experience. Minimal gunplay. No jump scares. Only observation, deduction, prayer pages (dua-nevisi) scattered as keys, and the creeping certainty that the Guide leading you — the Booklet Man who destroyed your past — has misrepresented everything about your situation.