Terminal Espionage
This game is from ldjam.com, which is currently unavailable.
You can try viewing the original page on Web Archive (may not load correctly).
You can try viewing the original page on Web Archive (may not load correctly).
Use your terminal inside your super secret bunker to control radio towers and perform clandestine operations! This is a puzzle game completely played from an in-game terminal.
More instructions and the steps needed to solve the first puzzle are on the itch page as well!
Post-jam fixes: Fixed a hard crash in the web build. Thanks to kristinamay for reporting!
* Unity - the engine
* Rider - the code editor
* Krita - for the beautiful walls and sprites
* Blender - for the gorgeous screens and furniture
* Cubase - for the atmospheric music
* Servez - for locally testing web builds
When the theme was announced, I had an idea to create a game where you're in a bunker and using various radio related equipment to do sneaky spy stuff during a hot cold war. This would include audio listening and manipulations. After a couple of hours, I learned that this wasn't doable for web builds, as one of the features for in-game audio manipulation isn't supported. But I decided to push on with the idea, there are other fun ways to make it work.
Early on I imagined that there'd be various devices in your bunker that you could control with knobs and buttons, plugging wires in the correct holes to connect devices, etc. But I realized that building/modeling them all and adding all those interactions would eat up a lot of time. So I went all-in on the terminal based gameplay. Some of the remnants of my early decision are still there (like being able to look around) but after half a day I scrapped all that and focused on the terminal.
I had various ideas in my head for puzzles. But as I was working on the most basic of basic puzzles (triangulation), I learned that this game would be very complex to understand and control. Ideally I'd add some off-screen instruction manuals for the player to look at. I also added support for different command screens (like the starting tutorial) but I never used them for anything else so the terminal is all you get.
Creating some easy puzzles turned out to be challenging, so there's only one proper mission. I had ideas for various other puzzles and devices (like a missile silo to blow up stuff, a mobile radar for advanced scanning, encoded messages coming from multiple sources that had to be combined, various audio related puzzles, shifting frequencies and moving locations, hacking into enemy devices and issuing commands, etc etc). But the terminal-based gameplay made some of these ideas difficult to implement. So even though there's not much actual content in the game, I figured the game is complex enough already without all that :D
I didn't expect to create a game like this, but I'm quite happy with the result. Thanks for playing and I hope you enjoy it despite the steep learning curve!
Play in your browser here!
More instructions and the steps needed to solve the first puzzle are on the itch page as well!
Post-jam fixes: Fixed a hard crash in the web build. Thanks to kristinamay for reporting!
Made in 48 hours for compo. Tools used:
* Unity - the engine
* Rider - the code editor
* Krita - for the beautiful walls and sprites
* Blender - for the gorgeous screens and furniture
* Cubase - for the atmospheric music
* Servez - for locally testing web builds
Developer thoughts / post-mortem:
When the theme was announced, I had an idea to create a game where you're in a bunker and using various radio related equipment to do sneaky spy stuff during a hot cold war. This would include audio listening and manipulations. After a couple of hours, I learned that this wasn't doable for web builds, as one of the features for in-game audio manipulation isn't supported. But I decided to push on with the idea, there are other fun ways to make it work.
Early on I imagined that there'd be various devices in your bunker that you could control with knobs and buttons, plugging wires in the correct holes to connect devices, etc. But I realized that building/modeling them all and adding all those interactions would eat up a lot of time. So I went all-in on the terminal based gameplay. Some of the remnants of my early decision are still there (like being able to look around) but after half a day I scrapped all that and focused on the terminal.
I had various ideas in my head for puzzles. But as I was working on the most basic of basic puzzles (triangulation), I learned that this game would be very complex to understand and control. Ideally I'd add some off-screen instruction manuals for the player to look at. I also added support for different command screens (like the starting tutorial) but I never used them for anything else so the terminal is all you get.
Creating some easy puzzles turned out to be challenging, so there's only one proper mission. I had ideas for various other puzzles and devices (like a missile silo to blow up stuff, a mobile radar for advanced scanning, encoded messages coming from multiple sources that had to be combined, various audio related puzzles, shifting frequencies and moving locations, hacking into enemy devices and issuing commands, etc etc). But the terminal-based gameplay made some of these ideas difficult to implement. So even though there's not much actual content in the game, I figured the game is complex enough already without all that :D
I didn't expect to create a game like this, but I'm quite happy with the result. Thanks for playing and I hope you enjoy it despite the steep learning curve!