The Lamplighters Guild (WIP)

Choice of Games games CoG Works In Progress
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Lamplighters Guild

Every night, heavy fog gathers in the streets of Tethenen. Shadows lurk in the fog, waiting for any weakness in the city’s protections to fail. As long as the lamps burn through the night, waiting is all the monsters can do.

Your guild, the one you’ve run for two years now, maintains those lamps. In a happier world, they would receive accolades. In this world, the one where only those wounded by Shadows can perceive them or remember them as anything more than childhood bedtime stories, your guild receives only suspicion and scorn.

After all, when Shadows break through, it is the lamplighters left standing in the aftermath.

In the midst of handling dwindling resources and a falling guild reputation, a mysterious package lands on your doorstep one morning, sending ripples through everything you thought you knew.

You’ve known ever since a Shadow scarred you that Shadows killed your parents. You hadn’t known it was deliberate, that someone had purposefully weakened the defenses.

You hadn’t known it was murder.

Come try out The Lamplighters Guild a WIP about a new and struggling guild leader with a murder mystery to solve.

  • Solve the mystery of your parents’ deaths and decide how to handle their murderer

  • Discover the truth of the Shadows and the secret of the increasingly heavy fog

  • Save your parents’ legacy and maybe even reconcile with your estranged siblings

  • Restore the reputation of the Lamplighters Guild and save it from dissolution

  • Determine who controls the overly powerful Kyte family…or help lead them to their downfall

  • Confront a saboteur and save the renaissance of alchemy

  • Fall in love with one of six romantic options

The romantic options are the following:

Elian (same gender as MC) and the MC have been friends ever since they both joined the Lamplighters at 16. Elian runs the clinic for the guild and neighborhood, but the clinic won’t help them reach their true goal: curing their older brother.

Nothia (she/her) should have been the next in line to the lead the guild, but her familial obligations stood in the way. Now, she refuses to let the MC be anything less than excellent.

Kian (ne/nem), alchemical prodigy and leader of the renaissance, once provided the MC a home when they became estranged from their siblings. Now, as ne spirals deeper into alcohol-fueled grief, ne is the one in need of help.

Ostric (he/him) has had an extremely obvious crush on the MC since childhood. Now, though aligned with the guards and his best friend (the MC’s younger brother), he’s crushing still.

Luvia (she/her) is the most notorious and wealthiest party girl in the city. Behind her lavish, laughing mask, though, Luvia hides a sharp intelligence and long-term goals she’s shared with no one. (Note: Players may choose to have had a prior relationship with Luvia, offering a ‘second chance’ romance.)

Frey (he/him) is the new city archivist who lives by the maxim that no one and nothing gets forgotten. While passionate about information, he’s inattentive to his own more-physical needs.

Every romantic option has their own additional concerns intersecting with the other plots. As the MC spends more time with them, the ROs bring you deeper into their personal worlds.

Word count of chapters 1-3: ~186k, with a single playthrough covering about 18%.

Current status: Drafting chapter 4

Link: https://cogdemos.ink/play/lishz/the-lamplighters-guild/mygame

Note: These chapters are drafts and subject to future changes.

Feedback welcome!

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March 2026 Writer Support Thread
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I thought the save system was broken so I posted about it, but I immediately remembered my internet has been weird, so I doubled checked, and it saved fine. I panic deleted my reply :sweat_smile: Restored it now

But, the world building when it comes to character creation is strong right out of the gate :eyes:

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Early notes:

The stat screen says your character is nonbinary even if you pick a male character with masculine names and he/him pronouns, or a female character with feminine names and she/her pronouns.

During character stat creation, you can select an option for the stats to be explained to you, but reading a long explanation is very tedious. Probably have an option to display it as:

#This is my sneaky way to engage in something I miss. (Subtle)

Would feel easier to digest.

Good luck.

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Ah. When I revised my character creation, I forgot to include setting that string variable again. Easy enough fix. Thanks for highlighting it!

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I enjoyed the hell out of this and would absolutely have clicked purchase well before the prompt came up. I’ll be following this closely, looking forward to more!

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I’m so glad you enjoyed it!!

Out of curiosity, who did you ask for help and who did you decide to help? (Also, who did you ask about your parents?)

I like knowing which paths people take.

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I don’t think it’s just you. I received “Save Failed” errors, too. I refreshed the page several times with no improvement, then tried two other games on COGdemos and had no trouble saving in either of them. Something does seem to be going on with the save system. It appears to be inconsistent, though, because it did save successfully for the first time just now.

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CoGDemos operates its own save system (unlike DashingDon where I had to add a line of code to enable saves). I checked and I have both the save system and back button enabled on the site. I just tested the save and quick save; both worked. I’m not sure what the issue may be.

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I played a heart-led prepared character and was immediately and without hesitation drawn in by Luvia, so most of my free time was spent helping and getting help from her. I really enjoy a second chance romance, so that element appealed, but also since she’s so influential and also inclined (at least in my playthrough) to believe and assist me, it really hit both the emotional and practical beats for my playthrough.

Otherwise I really leaned a lot on Nothia–I definitely saw how it could be a rivalry (and how she definitely was coming at it from a rivalry angle) but tbh the way the guild was such an isolated unit in the community made it feel like whether or not we personally got along, it was more important to recognize her as a competent and talented lamplighter than as a political rival.

Parental stuff under a cut for potential spoilers!

I spoke with an old coworker but off the top of my head, I can’t remember which one. The familial alienation is a thing my character at this point isn’t interested in healing–they have enough on their plate and just don’t have the emotional bandwidth to spare for trying to fix that rift. But a coworker is going to have more detailed information than a rival, so that’s the direction I went with

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Cinema, really liked it and can’t wait to see the completed version.

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