DROWNED OUTPOST
Genre: Text Adventure / Horror Simulation
Background: Stationed at an isolated deep-sea outpost, you are the last line of defense against unspeakable abyssal horrors. These entities disguise themselves as ordinary human vessels to infiltrate the mainland. Your only window to the outside world is a retro, green-and-black CRT terminal. You must rely purely on text-based clues, logic, and a sharp eye to survive.
Core Gameplay: In this tension-driven text adventure, you must survive three grueling night shifts. As blips slowly approach your radar's center, you must multitask and deduce the truth before time runs out:
Interrogate: Open communications with incoming targets to gather text-based intel, including their ID, route, ship type, and destination.
Cross-Reference: Manually read through a scrambled, out-of-order Security Archive. Compare the ship's statements against the official text records to spot subtle logical loopholes or lies.
Analyze Waveforms: Intercept the vessel's radio frequency and drag it across a master waveform display, looking for microscopic tampering in the code.
Make the Call: Press ALLOW to let them pass, or DENY to call in an artillery strike.
The Stakes: As the nights progress, the monsters' disguises become nearly perfect, and multiple ships will approach at once. Make three mistakes, and the horrors will breach your walls. Trust your archives, check the text, and don't let them in.
Background: Stationed at an isolated deep-sea outpost, you are the last line of defense against unspeakable abyssal horrors. These entities disguise themselves as ordinary human vessels to infiltrate the mainland. Your only window to the outside world is a retro, green-and-black CRT terminal. You must rely purely on text-based clues, logic, and a sharp eye to survive.
Core Gameplay: In this tension-driven text adventure, you must survive three grueling night shifts. As blips slowly approach your radar's center, you must multitask and deduce the truth before time runs out:
Interrogate: Open communications with incoming targets to gather text-based intel, including their ID, route, ship type, and destination.
Cross-Reference: Manually read through a scrambled, out-of-order Security Archive. Compare the ship's statements against the official text records to spot subtle logical loopholes or lies.
Analyze Waveforms: Intercept the vessel's radio frequency and drag it across a master waveform display, looking for microscopic tampering in the code.
Make the Call: Press ALLOW to let them pass, or DENY to call in an artillery strike.
The Stakes: As the nights progress, the monsters' disguises become nearly perfect, and multiple ships will approach at once. Make three mistakes, and the horrors will breach your walls. Trust your archives, check the text, and don't let them in.
Comments17
Papers Please vibes but with more text and less pictures, and a different theme. Nicely simplified for a compo entry.
Full marks for mood, sound was super immersive and the writing is great.
Only real criticism I have is the waveform matching mechanic, it felt like sometimes I couldn't find a match and yet the ship should've been allowed int. Wasn't clear when i'd checked the full spectrum. Maybe that could be tweaked.
But otherwise this is great, one of my favourite entries so far
Overall, genuinely incredible work, had a blast playing through it twice :) Night 3 is hard, wanted to get 0 mistakes but still ended with 2 :laughing:
Good job :slight_smile:
It could be interesting to increase the pace or add another layer of interaction, maybe something happening outside the main screen to distract the player.
The description mentions terrifying monsters, so it might be nice to reflect that visually as well.
Overall, a very polished entry with a great atmosphere.
It would be even better with more variety in the gameplay. The win condition was unclear to us. But we managed to lose! :D
We found the art style a bit inconsistent; the title screen suggests the use of genAI, which we would disapprove of in this context.
But I finished the game.