Newborn AI

by lars-erik

co-authored: @calixuss

Overall★★★★★★★★★★3.37

Fun★★★★★★★★★★3.04

Innovation★★★★★★★★★★3.61

Theme★★★★★★★★★★3.15

Graphics★★★★★★★★★★3.00

Humor★★★★★★★★★★2.88

Mood★★★★★★★★★★3.23

Newborn AI

You wake up with no knowledge or memory, staring at a freshly booted terminal.
An unusual message makes you curious and you decide to follow the white rabbit.

Dev status

We got hung up in making a nice terminal GUI all saturday.
3D was introduced on a whim sunday morning.
Most of the short story was written from 21 to 00 on sunday night.
It's back to work tomorrow.

There are a few bugs with the input not being disabled properly.
Otherwise, the game should let you get to the end within 10 minutes or (way) less.

Have fun and thanks! :)

#### NOTE/SPOILER:
If you get stuck at the decode command, try running all the commands
you've learned on the home terminal. You should be "home free".
Will think of a better way to trigger the story, but it is what it is for LD45. 😇

#### PLAY IN BROWSER:

Comments48

iozsaygi7 Oct 2019, 11:18

The concept is unique, minimalist graphics and interesting gameplay. Good entry.

SuperGamersGames7 Oct 2019, 22:50

I'm going to rate this at a later point, due to the fact it seemed to have crashed, but stay crashed despite the fact it was reopened.

PurpledArtFrog7 Oct 2019, 23:22

Really interesting concept :thumbsup: might be worth exploring :smile:

:purple_heart: :dart: :frog:

JusticePro7 Oct 2019, 23:41

Decode won't work

krjack8 Oct 2019, 01:39

Very interesting concept =) If accidentally click on another server before reading the text, you lose it, some sort of 'help' command would be useful

Lars-Erikauthor8 Oct 2019, 07:35

@krjack Thanks, but I think we rather have a bug where the text keeps playing on the next server. 🤣

@justicepro You're probably missing one action. If you bother, read the text on the third server again, then do something extra when you get home.

LoudLout8 Oct 2019, 15:11

Yeah, I feel some "Hacknet" in your game , that's good :D But very hard to understand what to do guys( Some kind of /help would be rescue for your game :) And PLEASE add sounds. Good luck)

Evannex8 Oct 2019, 15:20

I love this concept, however I'm unable to play it, It freezes and crashes when I click on the email box. I'll definitely try this again later on my home PC and hopefully I'll have more luck getting it to work.

Lars-Erikauthor8 Oct 2019, 17:16

Thanks for the feedback! Very curious how/why some report crashes. 😮

@evannex what device/browser?

Evannex8 Oct 2019, 19:25

It was a library windows desktop with google chrome but with it being a library computer it was probably just old or out of date on something. But I'm glad I came back to play it at home, this was super awesome! Job really well done, and I'd love a post LD version of this for sure.

Lars-Erikauthor8 Oct 2019, 19:29

@evannex Cheers! 😁

LillyByte8 Oct 2019, 20:00

An interesting text game, but a bit of a confusing UI for navigation. I think if that was improved upon and the game was expanded, this game could be fairly banger!

RAFFE9 Oct 2019, 18:30

This is an epic game! I always love these interactive games, makes you feel a lot more connected to the experience. The UI was indeed quite confusing for navigation. But at least it got me brainstorming lol. But it was nice to see a game like this! Was super epic to play a game like this. Oh and the graphics are also very fitting to the style :)

GreenDinoGames9 Oct 2019, 22:41

I really enjoyed your game! I would like to see more! (according to the mainframe, I'm encouraged to vote :D ) Unique gameplay, and i like how you implemented the theme in learning new commands. Great job!

Jesús González9 Oct 2019, 22:42

It's that the Unix operating system? Nice game.

Lars-Erikauthor9 Oct 2019, 22:45

@justicepro @loudlout does the note help? https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/45/newborn-ai#note
(nvm the "not working feature pop of ldjam 😆)

// rest
thanks a lot for encouraging feedback. 😁👍

Lars-Erikauthor9 Oct 2019, 23:07

BTW @loudlout, I played hacknet a bit, but the biggest inspiration is uplink. 😉

hiroboto10 Oct 2019, 06:15

lol really hardcore game design for programmers and I love the interactive part, but I guess some funny and strange items could be added so that the game could be more attractive for people with no programming backgrounds

zimennik10 Oct 2019, 08:59

Thank you for the amazing entry! It was fun!

Ryano10 Oct 2019, 09:42

Good entry. I really liked the UI when at the terminals, but moving between them was a little awkward. Definitely a good basis to refine and expand. Cheers.

Aquanim10 Oct 2019, 09:43

I'd love to see some more of this story. Great job :)

jusw8510 Oct 2019, 15:46

I got to the mainframe and the game ended, I think it's a good concept, although some parts could be improved. I thought this game was keyboard only, and was lost for abit before figuring out that you could click nodes to move to them, and click and drag to look around. I think this information would help people who get confused in the beginning. Also, the game seems to follow a fixed path, for example I wasn't able to "decode emails.dat" before "cat emails.dat" after it was tranferred to the home server. Otherwise, great entry!

Lars-Erikauthor10 Oct 2019, 15:57

@jusw85 you're right on all points. 🙂 It's all due to time. Will hopefully evolve the game some time.

Daitse10 Oct 2019, 21:34

nice game ! story is cool. we can definitely feel that the 3d was added on a whim but the concept is interesting and should be developped further if you have time :) Some audio would be a nice polishing touch as well :) Great entry nonetheless !

Shelvid10 Oct 2019, 21:34

Very interesting and minimalistic concept. Usually i don't like those kind of adventure games where you have to type everything but this was pretty interesting :) (Edit just in case you saw this earlier, finally got the game working and finished it). It was very interesting to the very end, really fun to do these things by yourself even tho its quite simple. Would be nice if file names were shown somewhere, didn't remember that file was called "emails.dat" for a while :^) Moving around hubs is slightly awkward but in general super solid entry, well done!

gord10ahmet10 Oct 2019, 21:53

Cool game! 5/5 for Innovation.

FinalForeach10 Oct 2019, 22:18

Looks like a nice game, but I was unable to play since it lagged out once I exited from the office server.

Lars-Erikauthor10 Oct 2019, 22:31

Thanks for the feedback, @finalforeach. I'm starting to get a sneaking suspicion about that input bug we've known about all along. 🤞 for time during the week-end. 🙂

Wolf4D10 Oct 2019, 23:36

The idea is great! I love your console. And "decode" part was pretty cloud.

PSiv10 Oct 2019, 23:46

It's like a programing version of a text based adventure game, I like it, it's a really good basis to build upon.

JNSOFF11 Oct 2019, 06:42

this performance....uhhhh
But nice game at all

LanaLux11 Oct 2019, 13:56

Took a sec to figure out how it worked, then I got really into it! Love the concept. I want to see more! :)

Marcin J11 Oct 2019, 18:02

I like games like and enjoyed my time playing it, but it really needs some sound. Maybe some stereotypical computer beeps when new messages appear in terminal?

Ava Skoog13 Oct 2019, 16:02

That was exciting! Would have been cool to have some music to ramp up the tension even more, but it was great nonetheless. Always fun to see something a bit unconventional like this. Loved the Jurassic Park vibes I got from the 3D navigation too. 😍 I think this would be really cool to play as a longer game!

ToxicComputer13 Oct 2019, 19:04

Good job! I liked the graphics of the terminal :)

AntarcticRuler13 Oct 2019, 19:11

It's a good game, although I did feel it was quite slow.

shubart13 Oct 2019, 20:16

Really unique game. Thank you.

WelshDivision13 Oct 2019, 20:47

These kinds of games are always a treat to play. Especially for any one who has any experience with the shell, it is always interesting to see how developers translate into game commands. As well, these games typically engage their reader in unique ways, such as telling the story through emails and IRC chats. For what it is, it kept me engaged throughout the entire experience. Nice job.

cybersoftuk13 Oct 2019, 20:48

Awesome idea - very innovative!
I like terminal and hacking games, this was short lived but great fun!
Well done!

velvetlobster13 Oct 2019, 22:56

not sure that is doable, but on the shell i am used to typing tab to autocomplete commands, i accidently typed that in your game, forgeting it was a game ... it seems to lose focus of the typing input and you are forced to use the mouse to get back to it .. having auto complete would give the precise shell feelings

it took me while to notice you could actually rotate the shell screen ...
this is very nicely done and reminds a lot of event zero ... maybe i would expect some event zero type of narrative in this

Lars-Erikauthor13 Oct 2019, 23:20

@velvetlobster thanks for the feedback. tab completion was easily downprioritized for the week-end deadline. in a full game if ever, maybe. 😉

Demuss16 Oct 2019, 10:04

Super nice idea! i loved the interactions between hosts. would love to see you expand this idea! Only thing that annoyed me was that every host expect home had the same color... so diffrent colors would be lovely or maybe fix is bigger font when we are away so we can actualy read the text from a far

Nice entry!

JustMars16 Oct 2019, 11:46

Interesting idea which could have a lot of potential if expanded on. Commands worked as expected, and the story that was there held my interest. The 3D navigation was a bit unclear at first, but once you figured it out it worked well enough. I would have liked to see a list of available commands at any point, maybe with the standard "help" command.

The part where your identity is revealed / you witness the conversation happening was quite innovative. Would like to see how the story moves forward from there. But anyway, really well done for a jam. The web page was snappy and lightweight, which is always a plus :)

Jonno18 Oct 2019, 15:01

I'd like to have rated this more but the game froze up on me when I clicked on the Email app, and then when it started up again I lost where I was. The GUI is great, though. Inspired by Another World, perhaps?

Lars-Erikauthor18 Oct 2019, 15:18

@jonno I never completed Another World. Can't remember any terminals. But I could mention loads of other inspiration. 😆
(Fallout 1+2, Uplink, Gibson books etc.)
Sorry about the crash. Haven't had time to reproduce. In any case, tnx a lot for feedback. 🙂👍

Jonno18 Oct 2019, 16:30

@lars-erik This is what I refer to :)
https://i.imgur.com/JiUNNWr.gif

Le Don20 Oct 2019, 13:06

Nice game! But I got at the decode part, as I didn't know you had to open/read the file, to decode it. I also think you should deactivate 3D movement, when you're using the consoles. And maybe don't reboot the nodes, when you're re-visiting them. I wanted to re-read some of the AI-text, but had to restart the game to read them. But overall I liked it!

upisfree-221 Oct 2019, 20:40

Охуенно. Спасибо большое за игру, очень понравилась. Отправил друзьям поиграть.

Other games by @lars-erik

★3.06

Plastic Patch Cleanup

★2.80

LD42