Nostalgia Nest — The Salamander King

Published by Hollow Press in June 2026, Nostalgia Nest is a lore game book (loreGB) by The Salamander King. Its cover, dust jacket, and a 16-page insert are all printed on GSK semi-transparent paper — a material that renders the object partially translucent, giving it a quality closer to a found document than a conventional publication. The interior is printed in full colour on Magno usomano 140g stock, stitched-bound, 144 pages, A5 format.

The World Inside

The book draws its source material from Nostalgia Simulator, a fictional PC game said to have briefly circulated among certain communities in the Pacific Northwest during the autumn of 1997. Distributed across four 1.44MB floppy discs, the game mapped a modest world divided into four regions. Despite graphics that exceeded the technical norms of the period, it fell quickly into obscurity — attributed to limited marketing, in-game bugs, and poor critical reception from the few players who encountered it.

The atmosphere the book inhabits is one of domestic unease and slow dissolution. Three fragments from the text establish its register:

"It smells sour with decay."
"It reeks of rotten wood and mold."
"It lulls you familiar and comforting somewhere between a memory and a dream. A house is not a home when nobody is inside its hollow walls ache longing for warm bodies home for anybody to rest."

The book also contains a mysterious internal language. Whether it can be deciphered is left to the reader.

Production Details

Publisher: Hollow Press. First printing, June 2026. Limited to 2,000 copies. Interior: Magno usomano 140g, full-colour offset. Insert: 16 pages, GSK 110g semi-transparent paper. Cover and dust jacket: GSK 190g semi-transparent paper. Binding: stitched. Pages: 144. Format: A5. Weight: 0.35 kg.

Artwork and Story: The Salamander King. Editor: Michele Nitri. Graphic Design: Maggie Olson. Graphic Design Supervisor: Marco Cirillo Pedri. Proofreaders: Alison Cuellar, Tommy Pazyck, Alice Amico (Am-Book Inc.).

This title is part of Lokator100's Art & Illustration selection of artist books and experimental publications.

Also available: Mock Soul – Maze Devil Pilgrimage, a related Hollow Press title by The Salamander King.