Around the World in 80 Days Game: Two Ways to Race Phileas Fogg
If you want an Around the World in 80 Days game, there are two good ways to play one today. You can race the clock as Passepartout in inkle’s 80 Days, a much praised interactive story that turns Jules Verne’s wager into a steampunk route planner with a 3D globe. Or you can step inside Verne’s novel itself as your own character, with a narrator that has read the book and answers whatever you type. Which one fits depends on whether you want a race built around a map and a clock, or the novel’s own world, with its people, ships and trains, open to whoever you decide to be.
This guide goes through both, says who each one is for, and ends with how to try the second one tonight without paying anything.
What people want from an Around the World in 80 Days game
The book is a race, and the search covers a few different wishes. Most people typing it want one of these:
- The race. A wager, a deadline, a timetable that keeps moving, and the pleasure of picking the faster route.
- The places. Suez, Bombay, the train across India, Hong Kong, Yokohama, San Francisco and the plains of the American West, seen the way Verne imagined them in 1872.
- The people. Fogg, who never hurries and never panics. Passepartout, who does both. Detective Fix, who is sure Fogg robbed the Bank of England. And Aouda, who joins the journey in India.
The table shows where each option lands.
The two options side by side
| 80 Days by inkle | Play inside the novel | |
|---|---|---|
| What it is | Interactive story and route planner | Written game in a browser |
| Who you play | Passepartout | Your own character |
| World | Steampunk alternative 1872 | Verne’s own 1872 |
| Story | Written by the developers, thousands of choices | Grows from your choices, grounded in the book |
| Choices | Pick from options the writers wrote | Type anything you like |
| Where it plays | Switch, PC, Mac, phones | A browser |
| Best for | Players who want a polished race against the clock | Readers who want Verne’s world |
The claims about 80 Days below are as of October 2026, read from inkle’s own page for the game and from its Steam store page. The claims about the novel are read from its Project Gutenberg edition.
80 Days by inkle, the race as Passepartout
80 Days is a narrative adventure by inkle, the studio behind several of the best known interactive stories of the last decade. Its Steam page sets it up like this:
1872, with a steampunk twist. Phileas Fogg has wagered he can circumnavigate the world in just eighty days.
You play Fogg’s valet, Passepartout. The Steam page says you “must balance your master’s health, your finances, and the time, as you choose your own path from city to city all the way around the world.” Trains, steamers, airships and mechanical camels come and go on a clock that keeps running while you decide. Every city is told as a short interactive story, and the page promises “thousands of choices” and that “every journey is unique”. There is a live feed of other players’ journeys, and you can race them.
The world is Verne’s turned sideways. inkle describes it as a “richly imagined, diverse alternative-history steampunk world”, so you will meet inventions and nations that are not in the book. That is a large part of its charm, and the reviews quoted on its store page are warm: the page lists TIME’s Game of the Year 2014 and an IGF award for narrative.
| 80 Days | As listed on Steam |
|---|---|
| Developer | inkle Ltd, Cape Guy Ltd |
| Publisher | inkle Ltd |
| Released on Steam | 28 September 2015 |
| Price | $12.99 |
| Other platforms | Nintendo Switch, iOS, Android, GOG, Humble |
Pick it if you want a finished, beautifully written game with a map to plan on and a clock pushing you, and you enjoy choosing between options the writers have prepared.
It is weaker for anyone who wants Verne’s own book. The world is a steampunk reimagining, you are always Passepartout, and what you can try in each city is what the writers wrote down.
Playing inside Verne’s novel as your own character
Project Gutenberg, the free library of public domain books, describes the novel this way:
“Around the World in Eighty Days” by Jules Verne is an adventure novel published in 1872. When London gentleman Phileas Fogg wagers half his fortune that he can circle the globe in eighty days, he embarks on a race against time with his French valet Passepartout.
It marks the book as public domain in the USA, offers it as an EPUB or a plain text file, and rates it fairly easy to read.
Verne’s story is unusually good to play inside because it is full of people who are only passing through. Fogg crosses the world surrounded by strangers: the Reform Club members who took his bet, the consul at Suez who signs his passport, the guide on the elephant in India, the captain of a small boat in Hong Kong harbour, the crew of a train stopped on the prairie. Any one of them could be you, and every one of them sees the race from a different seat.
The second way to play is to step inside that book. You give a narrator the novel, and it reads it before you begin: the places, the people, how each one speaks and what each one wants. Then you make your own character and type what you do. There is no list of choices. You can be a clerk at the Reform Club who has a little money on Fogg losing, a junior officer of the Mongolia steaming toward Bombay, a Hong Kong pilot whose boat Fogg wants to hire, or an assistant to Detective Fix who starts to doubt that Fogg is a thief at all. The narrator keeps the world consistent with what Verne wrote, and a plan that misses the steamer is allowed to miss it.
This is what LLM RPG does. You upload a book as a .txt or .epub
file, and it builds an atlas of that book’s world (characters, factions,
places, items and events) before your first scene. The Project Gutenberg
edition described above is a file you can upload, so the Reform Club is one
download away.
If you would rather start with no download at all, there is a ready-made steampunk world, Gears of Aetheria, in which an airship engineer uncovers a conspiracy in a floating city of brass and steam. It is an original world rather than Verne’s, but it plays the same way, and it is a quick test of whether typing your own moves suits you.
Pick it if what you want is to be inside the novel as yourself, asking your own questions on the steamer and the train, and you would rather start typing tonight than buy a game.
It is weaker for players who want a globe to plan on and a ticking clock on screen. It is a written story, read and typed, with no map or timetable of its own.
For more classic adventure played the same way, see the guides to a Treasure Island game and a Sherlock Holmes game. If you liked the steampunk side of 80 Days, there is a written steampunk playthrough of the world above. For the wider field, see interactive fiction games and text-based RPG games.
How the two play differently
The clearest way to see the difference is one moment from the book: Fogg needs to get from Hong Kong to Yokohama, and the steamer has already left.
- In 80 Days, you are Passepartout reading a departures board. You pick from the routes on offer, weigh the price against the days, and maybe find a shortcut the writers hid in a conversation.
- Inside the novel, you might be the owner of the pilot boat. Fogg offers you a fortune to take him to Shanghai in a small boat in bad weather. You can take the money, ask for more, refuse, or tell Fix where Fogg is going. The narrator answers whatever you choose, in Verne’s harbour.
Neither is better. One is a designed race with a beginning and an end. The other is an open world built from a book, where the race is happening around you and you decide how much of it is your business.
What it takes to start each one
| Option | How to start | What you need |
|---|---|---|
| 80 Days | Buy it on Steam, a console store or a phone store | A Switch, PC, Mac or phone |
| LLM RPG | Open the site in a browser | Nothing for the first five turns |
With LLM RPG you can play a ready-made world for five turns with no account at all, and signing up adds a free welcome grant of credits. Turning a book into a world costs credits. You are shown the exact price before anything is spent, and the current plans and credit packs are on the pricing page.
How to start an Around the World in 80 Days game tonight
If playing inside the novel sounds like your kind of game, this is the whole path from nothing to your first scene.
- Try it with no account. Open Gears of Aetheria and play five turns. A few minutes tells you whether typing your own actions suits you.
- Sign up with your email if it does. You get a one-time code, no password.
- Download the novel. Get Around the World in Eighty Days from Project
Gutenberg, as a
.txtor.epubfile. - Upload it. The narrator reads it and builds the world before you play, and you are shown what the reading costs before anything is spent.
- Make your character. A Reform Club member with a bet against Fogg, a ship’s steward on the Rangoon, a railway guard on the line to Allahabad.
- Type what you do. Then see whether Fogg makes his train.
When 80 Days is the better choice
Pick by the evening you want. A polished race with a map and a clock: 80 Days, where inkle’s writers have built thousands of small stories around the world and you choose the route through them. It is a finished game, it plays well on a phone, and nobody asks you to write a word.
Play inside the novel when the thing you want is the book itself: to stand on the quay at Hong Kong, watch an Englishman in a hurry walk toward your boat, and decide what you are going to say to him.