A county on the seam of two worlds.
NAV is a detective game about the unclean spirits of the Russian borderland. You are an investigator of the Special Board in a remote county where every misfortune is the work of someone — or something. The world is doubled: beyond the Boundary lies Nav, the same county turned inside out, and the truth usually hides on the far side. Investigate, build, fight — one clock runs through it all, and it does not wait.
The outpost is built by your hands.
Between cases you run the homestead: mark out land, raise fields and workshops, take in peasants — up to forty souls, each fed with grain from your own field. Buildings are not decoration: the bathhouse grants an extra candle for a case, the smithy forges charms, and the furrow ploughed around your land is the only thing that keeps the unclean away from the houses at night.
Six investigators — one rank.
The crew is six people with pasts, not character classes: a shapeshifter who tracks by scent; a herbwife whom the dead consider their own; a smith who breaks lies like rotten boards; an unfrocked monk with the keys to the church archives; a trickster at home in the fairground and the dens alike; a gravedigger who calls the dead by name. Each has a god at the shoulder, a curse, and doors of their own in an investigation — where one walks through, another is not let in. And the townsfolk answer with real recorded voices.
Trouble keeps a schedule.
Every case runs on a clock. While you think, the creature does not wait: it feeds, grows bolder, takes to the roads — and the best endings burn away with the deadline. Arrive hot on the trail and you save everyone; linger, and you will be choosing whom to sacrifice. A wrong thread on the board costs an hour too: thinking is free, guessing is not.
Combat is a spoken charm.
No dice: every number is visible before you commit. A turn is assembled like a spoken charm — you lay out word-cards and seal them with a key, and the shorter charm reads first. The creature honestly telegraphs its habit in advance — break it with the right card in the right slot. And victory is not one thing: slaughter the creature, call it by its true name, or buy peace.
Truth is gathered thread by thread.
Evidence links up with red threads on the board, and the game does not highlight the answer: a conclusion holds only if the proof truly converges, and snaps on a contradiction. False trails are real here — you can assemble one end to end, believe it, and be wrong. When eyes fail, there is the Nav Eye: a glance at the inside-out world reveals the hidden, and every glance is paid for with your mind.
The demo runs in your browser.
Try the demo — the first case in full, free and with no install. The full game is coming with more cases, more creatures and more of the county. Join our Discord to discuss the game and follow news before launch.