The Last Round: One Night Lighting the Lamps of Corrow

Corrow is a small market town on a slow river, and its streets are still lit by gas: ten old iron lamps, from the mill houses down to the chapel gate. Tomorrow the town switches over to electric lamps. Tonight is the lamplighter's last round, and the lamplighter is you. The Last Round is a free, short solo journaling game for one player and a deck of playing cards. Walk the ten lamps in order. Each card tells you which street you're on and what you find there: a family at supper, a child with a jar who wants "a bit of the old light," a crowd waiting to watch the last lighting. Lighting a lamp costs oil, and trouble costs more, and you won't have quite enough for all ten. So the real question is which lamps you leave dark. And somewhere ahead of you, someone else is lighting lamps too. What you need A standard deck of 52 playing cards (jokers removed), or two six-sided dice One six-sided die for setup Something to write with, or a voice recorder About twenty to forty minutes What's inside Four streets, each with three prompts by card rank (a quiet stretch, someone stops you, trouble): 12 street prompts The Other Light : a four-step mystery that opens with each Ace you draw One simple resource, Oil , and one real choice at every lamp: light it or leave it dark A lamplighter setup table, a Dawn table, and three endings depending on how many lamps you lit, plus a closing line for how close you came to the Other Light A short example of play Accessibility notes: playing with dice instead of cards, without writing, with a screen reader, plus a six-lamp short round A printable round sheet with the Oil track and a ten-lamp log Format A self-contained HTML file (open it in any web browser, or print it with its built-in US Letter print layout) and a PDF. No internet connection, fonts, or apps needed. Free, with an optional tip. If you enjoy it, Keeping Time at Corrow is a longer game in the same town: seven nights as the last person who winds the market clock. Our other solo journaling games are on our itch.io page. Content notes: the end of a job and a way of life; grief for a parent and for people who are gone; being watched by a crowd. Nobody is hurt in any prompt. AI disclosure: The text of this game was drafted with generative AI and checked so every table is complete and playable. The cover art is an SVG drawing that was also written by AI. The setting, characters, rules, and prompts are original to this game. Corrow and its people are fictional. Printing and sharing it for personal play is welcome; please link to this page rather than re-uploading the file. Published by Jarvis Ross. Questions: jarviss.ross@gmail.com