Maple Leaf

Every November, Pinecrest Hollow holds its Maple Leaf Festival, and every November one visitor is chosen. A very tall man in a turkey costume follows you all day, and nobody else can see him. At 8 PM the festival closes, the town goes indoors, and he stops being patient.

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"In Pinecrest Hollow, the last festival of autumn is a time for giving thanks. Just pray you aren't the one being hunted."

Welcome to the 87th annual Maple Leaf Festival

Pinecrest Hollow is a small town in the hills, closed in by forest. Most of the leaves have already fallen. There is frost on the grass in the morning and woodsmoke over the rooftops, and the town square is hung with harvest wreaths and warm lights. You can buy hot cider, Grandma Ruth's pies and caramel apples. There's a Ferris wheel, a fiddler on the bandstand, and a pumpkin that sets a new record every year.

You only meant to stop for the afternoon. Then Lyle, the parking attendant, took your car keys, and his crow carried them off into the corn maze.

Pinecrest Hollow is proud of its traditions. There is one it won't talk about.

The one who follows

At first you assume he's a festival performer: a figure standing between two vendor stalls with the head and chest of a huge wild turkey. His feathers are the color of dead leaves and wet earth. Below them he has the arms and legs of a man. The arms are too long, the fingers hang to his knees, and his crooked legs carry him with a walk that is almost human.

You look away. When you look back, he's closer.

Nobody else can see him. He stands in the middle of the square while families walk around him, and he shows up in nobody's photos except as a gap. The mayor says it's one of the Pettibone boys in a costume. The sheriff only sees a frightened visitor. The pastor smiles and says every harvest takes something.

The locals call him an urban legend. The people who survived him call him the Turkey Man.

A town that keeps its secrets

Nobody knows what he is. He might be a man who was changed into something else, a forgotten spirit of the harvest, or something that lived in the woods long before anyone built a town there. The people of Pinecrest Hollow don't seem to want to find out.

Talk to them, but choose your questions carefully, because each villager only gives you one conversation:

• The mayor says the road out is closed "just for the festival." Nobody leaves the Maple Leaf early. Nobody ever has.
• The festival committee plans everything, down to who comes and who stays.
• Every visitor is entered in the raffle automatically. Your name is already in. The prize is the turkey.
• The townsfolk don't remember how they got here, can't say what day it is, and have been stirring the same pot since forever.
• Aiden was last November's chosen one. She survived until sunrise, and she came back to warn whoever he picked next. She'll only tell you what she knows somewhere nobody can listen: at the top of the Sky Wheel.

When the lights go out

The festival runs until eight. After that the rides stop, the stalls are packed away, and the residents go home and lock their doors. If you have a home here, that is.

The streets empty one after another, and the only warm light left is behind other people's windows. That's when the Turkey Man starts hunting for real. He scratches at doors, taps on glass, and calls to you in voices you know. He'll wait outside a locked room for as long as it takes.

There are only two known ways to survive:

1. Escape Pinecrest Hollow before he catches you. That means getting your keys back from the middle of the corn maze, where something waits at the end of one of the wrong turns. Then you have to get your car past the barricade.
2. Survive until dawn. The church has a cellar with a thick door and old stone walls. Folks have waited out worse down there, but they don't come up the same.

Some visitors drive away. Some spend the night in a cell "for their own good." Some are never seen again, and their missing poster goes up next to last year's.

Features

• A hand-built folk horror town to explore: the festival grounds, a shifting corn maze, the church, the town hall, the sheriff's office and the motel at the edge of town.
• A day that runs on a clock. Afternoon turns to dusk while you play ring toss, eat pie and look for answers. The hunt starts at 8 PM.
• A stalker who's only there for you. He gets closer when you look away and gets bolder as the night goes on. You need to keep track of him without staring at him.
• Villagers who know more than they say. Every one of them has a single conversation, so what you ask determines what you learn.
• Five endings, from escaping to being taken. Not every way out is a happy one.
• Play in a browser or on desktop, with keyboard and mouse, a gamepad, or touch controls.

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When the maple leaves have fallen and the turkey has been prepared, give thanks for the people gathered around your table.
And if you hear footsteps outside your window on the night before Thanksgiving, don't look outside.
Because if you see a man with a turkey's head standing in the frost, staring through the glass…
He has already chosen you.