Questions and answers

Slowmarch is a set of story games about the great lives of history. Each life is a series of episodes. You give the orders, the clock keeps running, and at the end you find out what really happened.

Each episode has its own tempo. In Toulon, one hour of your day is ten minutes in the game, so the twenty hours of the siege take about five days. Events happen while you are away, and characters send word when they need you.

Then history decides for you: the game picks what really happened, or a sensible default for moments history is silent about. You can carry on as normal.

A few minutes at a time. You look in when a message arrives, read what happened, make a choice and put your phone away again.

The setting, the people and the main events are real. Your choices are not: you can follow history or depart from it. After every choice the game tells you whether it was historical, plausible, daring or free, and what really happened. Dialogue is written for the game.

The site is in English. The games can be played in English, Dutch or French: pick your language at the start or in the menu, and switch whenever you like without losing your progress.

In Toulon, yes. At the start you choose whose night you live: Buonaparte, the commander of the artillery; Sergeant Junot at the battery; or Thérèse, a washerwoman inside the occupied town. The siege runs as it really did, but each has their own choices, people and ending.

No. Thérèse, her son Lucien, her neighbour and the British lieutenant are invented, and the game says so. What happened to the town, the occupation, the flight on the ships and the reprisals afterwards, is real. Junot is real; his joke with the sand is a well-known tradition.

Buonaparte’s. What carries over into 13 Vendémiaire, such as who trusts you and what you remember, comes from his night. You can still live Toulon as Junot or Thérèse whenever you like.

Yes. You only need an email address so your progress follows you between devices.

Open your library and turn notifications on for each device you use. You can send yourself a test message from your account page.

Apple only allows notifications for web apps that are on your home screen. In Safari, tap Share, then Add to Home Screen. Open Slowmarch from the new icon and turn notifications on there.

Yes. Your progress is saved to your account. Start on your phone, continue on your laptop.

Yes: rain, wind, distant cannon, drums and gulls that follow the time of day in the game. Turn it on with the speaker button in the game.

You log in with a six-digit code or a link we email you. There is no password to forget, reuse or leak.

Your email address, your game progress, the devices where you turned notifications on, and your final choices as anonymous totals. No advertising, no tracking cookies. See the privacy page for details.

On your account page, under Delete account. You can also download all your data there first.