Adventures in Xenolinguistics!

Xenolinguistics :) I heard that word for the firs time today. I think I translated a few alien words :D

I really like the concept and enjoy these diegetic PC style games, but for the life of me, just couldn't work out what I was supposed to do. I clicked everything and spent a fair time trying to notice any pattern but just wasn't sure if it was unfinished or not.

@indigowolf thanks for trying! It's very much unfinished - you probably have enough information for a normal person to translate 5-6 words, and then from there it's all a matter of how much you want to decipher an alien language for absolutely no benefit, lol. But whomst among us hasn't been a little overambitious in a game jam?

When I saw how big the word list was, I was completely awestruck! Even though you didn't finish it, what you have now is more than enough for a game jam. Maybe if I get the chance I'll try to bunker down with the rest of the words, but I'm more than happy with what's already in the game. You did a fantastic job! The clues you gave were really excellent. Not giving too much away while leaving some breathing room for the player in case they're having trouble.

Nice take on the theme! Granted, I didn't get anywhere in it. I think I knew at least some words, but couldn't apparently match them correctly, so I guess I was way off. I may have to come back to this at some point. :)

Really fun idea! A little too tricky for my brain right after a game jam, but I'll defo return to this

Word puzzle games are not really my thing, but anyway I saw TRAPPIST and I even knew what it is. Amazing!

This has a lot of potential for a full out game, interesting to start with kept me engaged enough to figure out what I could, you definitely have something worth exploring here! Love UI games too personally :D

Did you... invent a whole alien language for the purpose of a jam game? Amazing. I wish this was a whole game, I would have loved to decipher this language clue by clue. Also, I have a thing for win95 UIs in games, so yeah, well done.

!> The large Lassilan and the small Lassilan were my first clues.

I managed to find enough pairings to unlock the other two emails, which was pretty fun to do :D I've been trying to figure out more of the symbols, and while I can see some of the patterns, it's tough to decode without any additional guidance. So I gave up :D the hints email told me I was on the right track, though!

I enjoyed it, good stuff!

couldn't figure out the first set of characters for a while.

i broke the game

I would love to see a solution in a post-mortem, I did not manage to decode more than 2 words. >_

Really cool idea -- would love to see a finished version. Excellent work!

thank you all so much for playing!! some of you suggested a post-mortem with more info on the language would be interesting, so I wrote one here: https://itch.io/blog/1495952/ld59-postmortem-creating-an-alien-language-for-a-48-hour-jam

cc @tolviere @tenthousandfireants @stasm @xotraz

@msipp27 any idea how you managed to break the game like this? I'd like to fix it!

Impressive!

Nice! Not too hard. You get Lasillian easily, then you're just trying to figure out whether it's soon or future and whatnot, and the glyph for "time" appearing in the title of the tense table as well as in the glyphs for adult and child is enough of a hint to get all that.

I LOVE IT I LOVE IT

Thank you so much @fae-pdf I really appreciate the effusive positivity :) If you saw my blog post, there's a big document at the bottom for your translation enjoyment :)

To answer your questions:

For half-rectangles:

!> yes, adjectives or adverbs. anything descriptive, anything describing what type of something it is

For half-circles:

!> prepositions, yes!

It genuinely makes me so happy that you got so into it, I'm grinning looking at my computer right now. I'm going to go check out your game, too!

@j3m i'm glad that my logical lines of thought made sense enough to follow. thank you for playing!

@kristinamay By the way I assume you're a fan of Arrival, have you read the short story it's based on also?

@j3m No but it's been on my list for ages because Arrival is one of my favorite movies! It combines my two great loves: language mysteries and sci fi :) I'll definitely check it out soon now.

@kristinamay i think it has something to do with the ending unlock of everything, cause it resets which words you've clicked in the original email for some reason and gave me a second copy of some glyphs, i'm not really sure tho.

@kristinamay That's really interesting because lots of things overlap! Including the look of the aliens and the idea that their primary language is written. Definitely check out the short story too

Really impressed that you were able to commit to how the language system works so quickly. Unfortunately didn't get super far in but really liked the setup! For some reason my brain/eyes are really bad at finding the underlined words in the emails and I kept missing some(i think bold would make it easier visually, but then might also take away the feeling of searching through the email in detail)

Great puzzle I am not smart enough to solve. My initial reaction on seeing the .png files in the archives was thinking of the Gold plated disks we have sent to space showing potential aliens what we look like. I didn't even think of sentence structure or anything like that :nerd: . I didn't get far but I still got a lot of enjoyment out of your game while I played it.

Really love the OS UI. The concept is brilliant — especially for fellow "Story of Your Life" fans like me!

Couldn't beat it. Is something supposed to happen when you map the dictionary correctly? If so I feel there aren't enough clues. Reminds me of Chants of Sennaar.

@kristinamay Thank you for the post mortem, I will be sure to check it out, and maybe retry the game with it!

I absolutely love games based on deciphering a language, and this one is no exception :) Thanks for this post—I really enjoyed playing through the first part (and continuing to decipher some of the characters, even though it got a lot harder!)
I haven't looked at the clues yet, but I think I'll try again to fill in the missing words (and with friends who love this kind of game as much as I do—it's a game worth sharing !)
I hope there will be a post-jam version !

I love this style of game, I just hope you had the time to add more visual hint. If you make more of this game, I would love to play the full version!

This seems super promising! I got far enough to get more emails, at least, but past that I settled for reading your (fascinating) postmortem. Really liked the choice of depicting entropy with combustion—that seems like it would be really broadly useful, though of course nothing is perfectly unambiguous. Would love to play a more fleshed-out version of this. Well done.

I managed to figure out 6 words, I think :laughing:. It was fun, but then the "end of the demo" avalanche of words and symbols ended me :laughing:. Would be interesting to try again when there's more guidance in-game =).

I saw the itch.io article and knew I had to play the game (before reading said article)! I see what you mean by the first level and therestofthepuzzle. The puzzle of figuring out the first symbols was fun enough, and I really wish there had been appropriate clues to keep the rest going.

I wonder: since you didn't have the "hints"/images to explain the various words, what made you choose these words in particular? Or did you have drafts of images you would have liked to add to the game? Since in the article you said

> most of the symbols were only created as I needed them

then I assume "needed" meant you knew you wanted to use the symbol already (: I guess I'm asking because I can see this game feeling more finished with a *much* smaller dictionary of words but more images to hint at their meanings.

It was also fun to see you mention

> arrows are rooted in our own ancient weaponry and may not mean the same thing to anyone else looking at it

but then still use the arrows in the symbols ^^

Small nits regarding polish: words that you gathered from a message are once again underlined when you re-visit the message. Also after finishing the first five symbols, the five symbols you have figured out appear once again in the dictionary of symbols but they cannot be placed over the words they represent.

Anyway, I enjoy games in the style of *The Case of the Golden Idol* or *The Roottrees are Dead* and adding a (con)language aspect to it is really lovely!

Wow, what an ambitious project. I'm afraid I don't have the patience for therestofthepuzzle but I really like the idea and what you got done for the compo. The two clues with the same set of symbols was a cool way to make me understand the meaning of the early symbols. The UI with the computer desktop was a fun touch as well, great work.