Ludum Dare #59compo
Under Signals
Under Signals
---Decode the signal. Identify the mimic. Don't let them in.
Description
You are a newly appointed customs inspector at Olympus Station, humanity's furthest outpost. Your job: verify incoming ships by decoding their ARGUS four-quadrant signal — hull ID, status, cargo, and intent.
The military hands you a manual. Half of it is redacted.
Over 5 days, you process incoming vessels using a CRT-style terminal interface. Decode the raw signal data, and submit your assessment. Some ships are exactly what they claim to be. Others... aren't.
Something out there has learned to mimic our signal encoding. It's your job to spot the forgeries — subtle violations in status logic, cargo isolation rules, and warning codes the military doesn't want you to know about.
3 endings based on your decisions:
🔴 Port Compromised — Too many mimics got through
🟢 The Vigilant Sentinel — You saw through the lies
🟡 Blurred Lines — Somewhere in between
How to Play
Wait for a ship signal, then download the quadrant data
Compare the signal against the ARGUS manual (SOP button)
Fill in your decode report: Hull ID, Status, Cargo, Intent
Clear or Reject the vessel
Pay attention to what's redacted — the patterns are there if you look
Controls
Mouse only — click to interact with all panels
SOP button opens the (partially redacted) operator's manual
LOG button shows your decision history
Theme Connection: "Signal"
The entire game revolves around reading, decoding, and trusting signals. Every ship broadcasts a four-quadrant signal that you must interpret. The mimics forge these signals to pass inspection. The military's redacted manual hides signal patterns you need. Even the narrative builds through intercepted signals — a comms officer's whispered warning, a garbled emergency broadcast, an "accidentally" decrypted MIMIC protocol transmission. The question the game asks: when the signal looks right but something feels wrong, do you trust the data or your instincts?
Tools / Tech
Unity (WebGL)
Made for Ludum Dare 59
Credits
Programming/Art/Writing/Music All by [13pilgrims]
---Decode the signal. Identify the mimic. Don't let them in.
Description
You are a newly appointed customs inspector at Olympus Station, humanity's furthest outpost. Your job: verify incoming ships by decoding their ARGUS four-quadrant signal — hull ID, status, cargo, and intent.
The military hands you a manual. Half of it is redacted.
Over 5 days, you process incoming vessels using a CRT-style terminal interface. Decode the raw signal data, and submit your assessment. Some ships are exactly what they claim to be. Others... aren't.
Something out there has learned to mimic our signal encoding. It's your job to spot the forgeries — subtle violations in status logic, cargo isolation rules, and warning codes the military doesn't want you to know about.
3 endings based on your decisions:
🔴 Port Compromised — Too many mimics got through
🟢 The Vigilant Sentinel — You saw through the lies
🟡 Blurred Lines — Somewhere in between
How to Play
Wait for a ship signal, then download the quadrant data
Compare the signal against the ARGUS manual (SOP button)
Fill in your decode report: Hull ID, Status, Cargo, Intent
Clear or Reject the vessel
Pay attention to what's redacted — the patterns are there if you look
Controls
Mouse only — click to interact with all panels
SOP button opens the (partially redacted) operator's manual
LOG button shows your decision history
Theme Connection: "Signal"
The entire game revolves around reading, decoding, and trusting signals. Every ship broadcasts a four-quadrant signal that you must interpret. The mimics forge these signals to pass inspection. The military's redacted manual hides signal patterns you need. Even the narrative builds through intercepted signals — a comms officer's whispered warning, a garbled emergency broadcast, an "accidentally" decrypted MIMIC protocol transmission. The question the game asks: when the signal looks right but something feels wrong, do you trust the data or your instincts?
Tools / Tech
Unity (WebGL)
Made for Ludum Dare 59
Credits
Programming/Art/Writing/Music All by [13pilgrims]
Comments30
Would love to give it another shot once I understand the rules — the idea really caught my attention!
Recorded my playthrough — https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KCuSkguNn44
Thank you so much for playing and for taking the time to share your feedback — it truly means a lot to me.
I completely understand the initial confusion you experienced. I think the main reason is that the game lacked a proper introductory tutorial level, and due to an image path bug, the Quad Panel wasn't displaying the correct visuals at the time you played. On top of that, some of the explanations in the SOP manual were admittedly a bit cryptic.
I've since gone back and fixed these issues. Once again, I really appreciate your feedback — it helped me make the game better. Thanks for playing!
The little gripes I have are mainly to do with the UI. The scrolling and window dragging of the manual window was a bit temperamental and it sometimes felt like it had a mind of its own. The scrollbar in the log actually seemed to work better for me. Also, because I'm on an ultrawide monitor, the UI went a bit wonky in full screen and some of the UI elements shifted around and overlapped with each other. It was still playable despite that though.
Nice entry. I enjoyed it :)
The rules were quit cryptic and i kinda thought i understood them and then it hit me in the end that yeah i was suposed to reject the weird ones or i was confused rather than just guess and acept them? Oh well sry basestation i was just doing my job with shit pay. I kinda dislike the look at info end decrypt it since it so boring manual work but here i kinda quickly kinda understood and guestimated later the things which is fun experience to start be able to read previously completely gibberish information.
Overral its slightly hard to play and big learning curve but really nice thematics going on.
I figured the Q1 was binary and for Q2 the third dot is supposed to show the worst of the two first dots.
But I genuinely have no clue for Q3 and Q4.
Q3 I assume I have to reject combination that are not in the manual, but I can't see the pattern, I've even written them down in a 2D table, I just don't see it. I can guess one of them is tri-tri-tri, and by mirroring, another one is circ-sqr-circ, but I have no clue for tri-circ-X and circ-tri-X
For Q4, there is no redacted part and it says to check against the manifest, couldn't figure out what that is.
Same for Q1, not sure what I'm supposed to check it against, I checked it against the K-00X, but never got a discrepancy, so I probably didn't understand it either.
I love these kind of games, reminded me of Papers, Please
The art was spot on too
@dimonasdf @justine-d I totally agree with the "Papers, Please" vibe! Merged with escape games mood.
Seems to me you did a lot of work for this game, between the UI, the puzzles, the texts... well done! :clap:
Good job :slight_smile:
Super fun game! I was very intrigued by the description that you have to both keep an eye on the signals and your instincts, I liked that a lot. There was that one case where a ship comes in that by all accounts should be asking for help, but their Q4 signal is that they want to resupply or offload I think. So yeah, not letting them in. On that note, the different signal categories were cool, figuring out what each of them meant. During the first ship, the first thing I did is go through all the quadrant signals in the manual and figure out the patterns behind them, felt great when my patterns were vindicated by getting the correct ending. Very cool take on the theme as well, signal comparison against a different set of patterns is a super fun take on it, and I think it was implemented extremely well in this game, very well done!