Playing Kafka

Charles Games

About this game

Although you did nothing wrong, you were arrested one morning. You arrived for work, but you don’t recognize your assistants. And your upbringing left you with a pervasive sense of guilt. Welcome to Playing Kafka, an adventure about the alienation of modern society as well as unresolved family issues. The game adapts three works of the famously absurdist writer and was created with leading Kafka experts.

Can you manage to win an unfair trial? Is the job even real? Can you escape your father’s crushing presence? How do you move forward, when all solutions are obfuscated by a web of unclear rules and machinations…

The game features:
• a fully voiced branching story, based on Kafka’s The Trial, The Castle and Letter To His Father
• atmospheric puzzles, fateful decisions and a drag and drop gameplay that makes characters and environments come alive
• approximately 1.5 hour of story in an ever-changing setting

Three books, three game chapters:

The Trial
You face an opaque legal trial and are slowly sucked into a web of perplexing bureaucracy. It is up to you how to approach the vague, but insidious accusation – choose who to ask for help and how to talk to judges, procurators, and others as the judgment is slowly closing in on you. Does it even matter if you’re innocent?

Letter to His Father
Drawing inspiration from Kafka's unsent confession to his father, this chapter delves into their tense relationship. Try to find the right words that helped Kafka come to terms with his upbringing. See Franz struggle to connect with his father in scenes from the past. Is there any hope of reconciliation?

The Castle
You arrive at a snow-laden village to work as a land surveyor, but you quickly find that nothing is as it seems – locals talk about the village Castle in hushed tones and each day brings more questions than answers. Will you ever be accepted by the forever out-of-reach Castle?

The game was developed to commemorate the centenary of Kafka’s death and was developed in cooperation with the Goethe-Institut, Prague.

The Chinese language version was initiated and supported by the Czech Centre Taipei.

Ratings and reviews

I think this is a beautiful game. I would hate to rate it anything other than five stars. However-- the game, is, unfortunately, extremely broken. Maybe twenty minutes in, it freezes and becomes unplayable. I hope this game is fixed.

The first time I read Kafka, I felt something I had never experienced before. This game truly captures the Kafkaesque atmosphere and makes us feel what the characters in his stories go through. It's an outstanding game — I hope to find more like it. Congratulations to everyone involved.

I loved this game! It has great graphics, little references throughout the game that I really liked seeing, I like the endless choice of responses, the stories were well done, a truly wonderful Kafkaesque experience that I'll pe replaying over and over! 🪲

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