Drowned God is rich in atmosphere and immersion in every aspect of its presentation, especially in visuals and music. The story follows a linear path, albeit a little cryptically in some places. This is because every level of the game features clues and details for the player to start piecing things together like a puzzle; to uncover the greater narrative and better understand it. However, it is still a mysterious game at its core and answers are hardly ever given to you so easily, and you might also still have unanswered questions by the end.

At its release, Drowned God was slightly esoteric, as it explores many ideas, conspiracies, and concepts that were not so easily found (even on the internet) like they are today. In spite of this, it sharply capitalizes on the conspiratorial interest that took off in the 1990s. This kind of commentary was not uncommon, either, as you can find the same sort of thing in shows like The X-Files (which this game's origin actually predates), Twin Peaks, Millennium; as well as games like Deus Ex.

While a bit of legend and external events have made the game somewhat more notable in recent history, it is still relatively obscure. These details will be explored elsewhere but, suffice to say, this game had quite a lot going on before, during, and after its development and release.

Click the big play button when you're ready!

End Demo

How was this made?
I used the complete, original demo, then installed it natively inside a Windows 95 emulator, created with js-dos, hosted right here on my website. Please wait a while for the demo to load if you have a poor/slow connection.

Choose between the installer version or the portable version.
Requirements: Windows 7, 10 or 11

Drowned God Installer.exe
967 MB
Download

To Install:
Launch the EXE and follow the instructions. After it's done, follow the steps below, then launch the game.

drownedgod.zip
969 MB
Download

Portable Version (.zip):
Extract the zip anywhere you want, follow the steps below, then launch the game.

The original CDs. You had to switch them as you progressed the game! One CD couldn't fit entire games back then.

Drowned God on Steam
Price: €10.79
Store Page

Drowned God on Epic Games Store
Price: €9.89
Store Page

Why not purchase it officially?
Above is the official release, made available on Steam in 2025 and Epic Games Store in 2024. The Drowned God IP was transferred over to Harry Horse's estate when he passed. There was renewed interest in re-releasing the game officially after a short-lived fraudelent release in 2023 on Steam. Unfortunately, none of the games' bugs have been fixed as falsely claimed on the store page. The bugs are severe; crashing the game very frequently, locking you out of certain areas, and even wiping your save files. The only new addition with this version is supplementary material, which I have already made available (for free) here on my shrine. Personally I have not purchased the game on Steam as of 2025, and will probably never do so unless they fix the overwhelming amount of game-breaking bugs.

Disclaimer: For preservation and educational purposes, I have archived the game at the Internet Archive. Download links for the installer and .zip are hosted externally on archive.org, and this site does not claim ownership of the content.

Drowned God OST.zip
115 MB (98 MB compressed)
Download

Contains the full, official soundtrack for Drowned God. Featuring tracks from every level in the game. I made this compilation myself, by bulk downloading Savanna Anthrax's YouTube playlist and then converting the videos to MP3 files. I have put some of my favourites in the music player above!

Diary of a Plagiarist
Harry Horse, the creator of Drowned God, falsified a historical document and tried to pass it off as real. It went into all kinds of ancient conspiracy and occult stuff. He essentially came up with as many crazy things as he could to see what would stick. The document was, of course, discovered to be fake and he was nearly sued. Nevertheless, this experience formed the basis for what would become Drowned God.

This document tells the story of how the original manuscript was created by Harry Horse in 1985. There are old notes and retellings of the original book's contents. Unfortunately, there isn't a clear image of what the original material actually covered, but there are bits and pieces you can connect with elements of Drowned God.

Drowned God Art Book
This is the official art book for the game. It features early concepts of many things, some of which not featured in the game. These are accompanied by descriptions of the art, as well as some behind-the-scenes details for the making of the game.

Be forewarned, there are spoilers included in the art book, so you are better off browsing through it after playing the game.

Original Instruction Booklet
This is the newest copy of the very same manual, with much better quality.

Official Game Guide
This is the only existing official guide that actually goes through the entire game. It's more or less on par with what you can find online, albeit a bit short. It was released in 2024 as part of the pre-release supplementary materials.

Performance
This game was released in 1996, with very old systems in mind. It was created for Windows 95 systems and to this day, there have been no official efforts to make the game playable or optimised for modern systems. I say this knowing the game is available for purchase on Steam and Epic Games Store, with the claim that it works and is bug-free; this however is not the case and it actually has all of the old bugs as well as some new ones. I strongly recommend against purchasing it officially unless you just really want to have it in your digital library. There are many other versions online, including right here on my site, that are mostly bug free. They aren't 100% perfect but they are as good as it gets for this title, and in my opinion the ideal way to play it. Regardless, I would still recommend saving often, in the event that is crashes or gets stuck.

Aesthetics
Drowned God instantly took me in with its visuals. The 3D-scanned clay models are similar to those of Fallout (1997), another game I am a huge fan of. The similarities struck me instantly, despite this being a point and click game. The game exceeds at making every level and asset feel immersive; at every point in the game, there is a handful of interesting things to look at and interact with. The visual style of the game really sells the eerieness of some places and characters, even though I personally didn't find this game eerie, I would describe some specific scenes or moments as such. I really enjoy the amalgamation of the different aesthetics and motifs in Drowned God, and it takes visual inspiration from various sources and points in history, as well as fantasy. This includes astrology, tarot, Arthurian legend and medieval times, Egyptology, science, pre-history, occultism, and more. Somehow the game makes all of these different concepts fit together aesthetically and narratively like a jigsaw puzzle. After all, the game seeks to be the one and only answer to all conspiracies; the tagline even claims "Unlock 40,000 years of lies".

Story
The narrative of Drowned God is both straightforward and cryptic. Even from the beginning of the game, there are many clues as to what is going on in the big picture. This slowly culminates throughout the game until it reaches a point where if you haven't pieced together the defining secret yourself, you are directly told what it is and from various perspectives, too. This aspect of the game makes revisiting the narrative more enjoyable, because the clues that were there all along now suddenly "click". Describing the overall narrative is somewhat challenging due to the sheer volume that it covers, and in such little time. Drowned God only takes roughly 12 hours to complete, assuming you're getting through the puzzles at a good pace and reading most of the material. In its essence, the story pieces together dozens of different conspiracy theories, biblical references, and myths into one overarching "secret" that you must choose what to do with at the end of the game. In a way, this small detail brings a sort of RPG element to the game, which I like. I enjoyed the game's rich use of history, both ancient and modern; many time throughout the game, I questioned whether what I was reading was based on something in real life or if it was made up solely for the game. I think that's an excellent example of how immersive the game is and how well it sells the conspiracy aspect of it.

Gameplay
The gameplay is simple; it's a point and click adventure game, and most of the game consists of just navigating through areas and solving puzzles/mini games. These puzzles are where the real challenge of the game comes from, though I will say that unless you have some exposure to point and click games already, you might get filtered by the navigation system at first. I had trouble not getting lost or turned around in a way I didn't want to go until I got a grasp on how to control the camera. More on the puzzles, they are more challenging than you may think. It's not something you would get on the first try, and every puzzle in the game requires you to think on it for at least a few minutes. I appreciate that the puzzles are like this, because it makes the story progression feel more "earned". There were a couple of times where I got stuck for a while on a puzzle and it was frustrating, but that had more to do with me wanting to solve it on my own rather than following a walkthrough. Tip: the first round against the Templar Knight is unwinnable! Hard coded.

Music
I was very impressed with the music of Drowned God. Every track I heard accompanied its' level or scene perfectly, and there was also such a wide range of different sounds and styles. One of the reasons I wouldn't describe the entire game as any particular adjective, like "eerie", is because the soundtrack is so varied and at times even joyous or whimsical, that it stops the overarching theme of the game from becoming too foreboding. It strikes a good balance in this way. The soundtrack gives the game so much more personality than it would've had otherwise if it wasn't so eclectic.

Overall, I would highly recommend this game to anybody who loves ecclectic styles and aesthetics, conspiracy theories, aliens, and point and click games. Even if you've never tried a game like this before, like me before playing it, this game will ease you into the genre.

★ ★ ★ ★ ★

Here are all the tarot cards from the game. Drowned God has a handsome collection of fully animated tarot cards, and these are all accompanied by a narrated synopsis of the card and what it represents in the game.

To view any one of the cards, simply click a card and place it in the star slot on the left.
This is similar to how you use the cards in-game!

Front, Side, Back covers for the German release

Promotional Poster (1)

Promotional Poster (2)

Promotional Poster (3)

Promotional Poster (4) (Germany)

Secret Service, Issue 46, 1997, Poland

PC Gamer, Issue 18, 1998, Sweden

Mondo 2000, Issue 16, 1996, USA (1)

Mondo 2000, Issue 16, 1996, USA (2)

Mondo 2000, Issue 16, 1996, USA (3)

Mondo 2000, Issue 16, 1996, USA (4)

Mondo 2000, Issue 16, 1996, USA (5)

Mondo 2000, Issue 16, 1996, USA (6)

To ensure things are not lost to time, I made this archive. Each piece collected here plays a part in preserving the legacy of the game.

Original Website from Inscape (1996)
The original website for Drowned God has always remained elusive. The site, www.inscape.com/drownedgod, was launched in 1996 just in time for the game's release, and was already nuked from cyberspace by the end of that year. The only place you could get a glimpse of what it looked like was on the Making of/Behind the scenes of Drowned God promo video released by Inscape:

The overall concept and narrative of Drowned God can be attributed to one Harry Horse (real name Richard Horne). Drowned God began in its earliest stages in 1983. At this time in his life, a 23-year-old Harry's aptness for pranks and trickery would get him into all sorts of trouble. One such event was his creation of an alleged twelve-volume book, a forgery, that he had developed as a 19th-century accounting of what happened to Atlantis. According to Harry, it was full of occult symbolism, allusions to modern-day conspiracies like the Illuminati, and cryptic hints that the origin of our species might not be what it seems. It was also to be a Nostradamus-esque book of predictions for things to come in the far future. He signed all of these forgeries under the false name Drahcir Enroh (his real name, reversed) and dated it at 1846. Harry went to many lengths to posture the authenticity of the volumes, as well as their "old age". Specifically, he used a mix of mothballs, orange juice induced "moulding", dust and ash from the fireplace. It was to look like it had been picked from the crypt. There was an air of mystery to it as well, as he had come up with the idea to produce only eleven of the proposed twelve volumes, that way he could play with the idea of a "missing volume". This ruse was evidently somewhat convincing, as it did not take long for Harry to find potential buyers; though he was cautious to auction it and have it face the scrutiny of experts in this field. Simply put, Harry was doing rather poorly financially and this elaborate scheme felt like a ticket to getting quick cash. Eventually, he found an old antique store with an owner by the name of Armstrong that was intrigued by the manuscript's apparent age. Though he only brought one volume, he told the store owner that it had been in his family's possession as a larger set of twelve. He regrettably sold this first chapter for fifty pounds, expecting more, and soon realized that he would have to produce the other volumes if he wanted to make more money. This

charade would continue up to his seventh volume. At this point, Armstrong had presented it to an antiquarian book-selling friend named David, who presented it to various auctioneers. These auctioneers had an expert take a look at it, and they made quick work of Harry's false alias of Drahcir Enroh. But rather than connecting this to Harry himself they instead, by complete dumbfounding coincidence, connected it another real writer of that time period; a man also named Richard Horne. He was a poet, and had written philosophy as well as musings on astrology. This, of course, benefited Harry for a short time. David started taking it to publishers. One of these publishers, Stephanie, was familiar with Harry as well as his true name, and his work. While David is thinking he's received the opportunity of a lifetime to help publish and distribute a groundbreaking and exceedingly rare artifact of a book, Stephanie would advise Harry against continuing any further. In his hubris, Harry decided to risk it for the money and march on. At some point between Harry finishing the seventh volume and the next meeting, David had grown suspicious of the manuscripts given thus far, and of Harry's insistence on cash up-front. He now wants the full book, and refuses to pay for anything else unless Harry agrees to bring more. Harry begrudgingly obliges him, although he couldn't help but risk his skin by upping the price to seventy pounds this time. Nonetheless, the deal was made. Or was it? Days pass, and Harry has been hard at work at finishing up more writings. The phone rings and, to his surprise, it's Stephanie. The publisher tells him that David definitively knows the books are fake. Harry was hardly surprised and thinks "it had to happen eventually", but what he did NOT expect was that David had been planning on getting the police involved. My own personal suspicion (if I'm to believe the whole story) is that this 'David' character wanted to butt his own scam into all this, as well as supersede Harry's benefits from it.

The story gets a little muddy here. Apparently he received fines by the end of it all, but Harry also says he fled to France shortly afterwards. With many aspects regarding this story, it can be hard to take Harry's word at face value. Details change, and he was known to be an avid trickster with a fancy for theatrics. Regardless, this is basically where this part ends, and the story of 'Diary of a Plagiarist' became a memory. For a brief time there were alleged inquiries being made by a film company to either produce a documentary about the whole situation, or even adapt the book into a film. Harry was not the least bit interested in this proposal, and for one reason or another, it fell through anyway. The book fell into obscurity, out of Harry's possession and thoughts. This wouldn't last in the years to come, however.

Genesis
By the early 1990s, Harry Horse had returned to his relatively ordinary life. He was still a children's book writer by trade and also created political cartoons for the New Yorker. One day, a friend by the name of Mark Burgess introduced the video game Myst to Harry. He hadn't had much experience with games of that sort, nor did he even have a computer to play them on. The game struck something in Harry and, according to him, came at a time where he had recurring dreams of the events in 'Diary of a Plagiarist'. With these old memories of lost history and ancient conspiracies coming back to the forefront of his mind, and him becoming enamored with this game that was completely unique to him, the wheels started spinning. One sore point Harry had with Myst is that the story, or lacking presentation thereof, was utterly uninteresting to him. But the visuals, the high-quality assets and the ways of exploring them. That left an impression. He'd not been aware that such immersive artwork was even possible for a video game. In his mind this would be the perfect catalyst, not only for the foundation that 'Diary of a Plagiarist' had made, but for something far more expansive. He shared this idea with Mark and the two would go on to make the first steps in making this vision a reality.

Mark Burgess shared Harry's interest in mysteries and conspiracies. He would go on to help develop the UFO and extraterrestrial lore for the game. Together, he and Harry made contact with another illustrator by the name of Alistair Graham. Alistair has described it as an inquiry from "out of the blue", but by the time they met in person they formed a quick bond, and an interest in seeing this project through. Alistair became an integral part of the game, contributing a massive amount to the art design of levels, characters, and 3D assets. Through means I've not been able to uncover, they also made contact with a man named Algy Williams. Algy was a producer and had the means of pitching the game to various publishers, as well as getting more hands on deck. These four men, along with many other programmers, artists, and musicians would form the company 'Epic Multimedia Group', which will henceforth be referred to as EMG. Algy hired Chris Maslanka and John Morris, who collaborated in making "fiendishly difficult" puzzles for the game, an aspect of Drowned God that would remain infamous in the game's legacy.

The team at EMG managed a good pitch with Time Warner Interactive, a subsidiary of the Time Warner company (now WarnerMedia). The deal with Time Warner made for a good start, they'd already released some games and were backed by a massive company. The general timeline of things is hard to piece together, but it can be assumed that this happened in 1993. In these earlier days, X-Files hadn't even been created yet, so a lot of these ideas were relatively fresh. Development progressed well for a few years, until Time Warner decided to close Time Warner Interactive. A lot of work had already been put into Drowned God, and having the game forced into this limbo state felt hopeless for quite a few people at EMG. Even more so due to the difficulty of selling the game conceptually, as consequence of its subject matter. Fortunately for EMG, they managed to find another publisher called Inscape. They were another company jointly funded by two other subsidiaries of Time Warner, HBO and Warner Music Group. Like Time Warner Interactive, Inscape had a few games under their belt already. A big difference is that Inscape had already dabbled in abstract, weird games. They had collaborated with The Residents, a rock band from Louisiana, to make an interactive game called 'The Residents: Freak Show', as well as 'Bad Day on the Midway'. They also worked with the band Devo on 'Devo Presents Adventures of the Smart Patrol'. The year before Drowned God released, they had published a game called 'The Dark Eye', a similarly spooky point-and-click adventure game. From this, Drowned God looked to be right at home.

In total, the budget for Drowned God had climbed to $3,000,000. According to Harry Horse, this increase in scale meant a dulling of his overall intended message for the game. Whether that's true or not, it wasn't the easiest development cycle; by all accounts, much of the game had to be downsized or outright cut. Harry, as you can imagine, was less than excited about this on various occasions. From comments made in the recently released art book, it can be assumed that this was a tumultuous period for the game and that Harry was not shy about making his contention known, theatrically so. There were even more changes near the end of development, with the intended first and second worlds being switched in order, as well as the fourth world being significantly cut down despite having hundreds of assets already made. Irrespective of this, Drowned God would meet its deadline for manufacturing and release.

Judgment Day
Without sugar-coating it, the release of Drowned God was a complete and total mess. The game received middling reviews across the board, with many of them criticizing its bugs and cryptic instruction. Users took to what were archaic forums of the time to complain about getting stuck, having their progress deleted, or even being unable to launch the game. It sold relatively well for its first week, but this myriad of problems quickly struck ire amongst its intended audience. Patches had to be rushed out as soon as possible, and with each patch there would be more, louder voices lambasting the developers for not actually fixing anything. This continued for four patches, and some of these bugs still exist to this very day. While it had been planned to use what was cut from the game to foster the creation of its planned sequel, Drowned God: CULT, this would never come to be. The game was reportedly removed from shelves within only a month of it selling 100,000 copies, with EMG buckling as company soon after. Alleged backdoor deals between the producer, Algy, and Inscape regarding film rights, several books, etc. all fell through. In just one year after its release, Drowned God's publisher would meet its end as well. Inscape was bought out then rendered defunct almost all at once.

According to Harry, he never received royalties from the game. Even if the game had not floundered at launch, it's safe to say he was tired of the entire process. Any interest in doing a sequel, even if done the way he'd want to, soon disintegrated. Following the release of the game and its subsequent failure, everyone involved went their own separate ways. Harry returned to writing and illustrating childrens' books, and would speak on the game only sparingly in subsequent years, in the occasional interview. He would go on to speak about it in a correspondence of letters with a dedicated fan, touching on details I've mentioned here as well as more elaborate descriptions of what was cut from the final product. He also claimed that Rockstar Games had approached him with a proposition of making Drowned God: CULT. Is this true? Probably not.

In more recent years, the game has had resurgences of attention here and there. It's also been covered by various YouTube channels over the years in playthroughs and retrospectives. While it retains some obscurity, for now at least, it still clearly has a devoted cult following that can never quite forget it. It's been archived and uploaded in many places, fraudulently re-released and then officially re-released, covered extensively in podcasts, and so on. Despite its problems and troubled history, Drowned God has clearly made a lasting impression on many people.

1. Mondo 2000 - Issue 16, 1996
2. harryhorse.co.uk - Drowned God
3. Gamespot Interview - Harry Horse
4. PC Gamer - Aliens, conspiracy theories, and a forged diary inspired one of the weirdest games of the '90s
5. Richard Horne Letters to Fan
6. Inscape (Wikipedia)
7. Time Warner Interactive (Wikipedia)
8. Making of Drowned God
9. Google Groups
10. The Nonsense Bazaar Podcast - Harry Horse and Drowned God. Part I, Part II, Part III

The small amount of facts that are out there about the case do not point favourably in Harry Horse's direction at all, and it doesn't even really feel right to try to talk about it from an impartial viewpoint. If you're interested in this, you can find out more information yourself, as there are various places online that cover this. I just chose for my shrine to not be one of those places. Reading all there was about the case was certainly an exercise in seperating the art from the artist. The only silver lining I can think to say here regarding Drowned God is that none of the morbidness of Harry Horse's later life leading to the events in 2007 was present during the development of the game, in the early-to-mid 1990s.

This section was one of the last to be written before the shrine was completely done. I had to take a little break from making the rest of the shrine because the whole thing is just depressing. It almost made me want to not publish the shrine altogether, but I remembered that I really do enjoy the game and want others to enjoy it too; everything else came years after the game's development, and it's available to play for free, so no money needs to be spent in a conflict of interest. This video game is not just one writer or one artist, it is dozens or hundreds of people working to bring a vision to life.

Nothing will ever change the fact that Drowned God was Harry Horse's brain child, but it would be doing a disservice to the product and to all the other people who worked on it to not celebrate the good work that was done all because of one individual.

✝