As a recent graduate of the Mars Planetary University of Technology's program in Alien Archaeology (with a specialization in technology studies), you've traveled to a newly discovered earth-like planet that has the remnants of an ancient civilization on it. You and your fellow researchers have discovered a cache of documents, ads, and blueprints from that ancient civilization.
24 blueprints. Hand-drawn art. Wholesome vibes. Cute little aliens. Let's investigate some tech!
Can you use the clues in the media to determine each blueprint's purpose?
How to play
Panning is left click and drag, and zooming in and out is done with the scroll wheel (or with pinching on a trackpad).
You can access the blueprint notebook by clicking on the tab on the left side of the screen.
In order to confirm correct answers, you need to get three blueprints correct at a time.
-----
Made for Ludum Dare 60. Made in Godot. Art made in Procreate.
Note: I had a playable build ready in time for the compo but I decided to take the extra day to add in some polish. I did make most of this game while sitting next to a campfire! I enjoyed making all the art for the game, it was a departure from my typical pixel art style.
Music from OpenGameArt.org:
"calm bgm" by syncopika
Sfx from Freesound.org:
"Slide Stop" by AfterDarkAnimation
"turning pages" by Luke100000
Thanks to Matt, as always, for playtesting!
PS if you finish the game please share a screenshot of your favorite Being. Mine is the little pink one with the gaping maw (complimentary).
@vokietislt thanks for playing and thanks for the feedback! Did you have issues with the controls or just a tough time figure out the pictures? They're meant to be a bit ambiguously related to the blueprints but there should still be some touchpoints you can use to get started. LMK if you are interested and want any hints!
@kristinamay few freebies would be nice to get going, that would indicate where to look, and maybe less choices? it's quite an enormous list, but i guess it's fine for what it is, just not easy.
@vokietislt I recommend finding an object on the corkboard and then looking through the blueprints until you find one that matches, rather than the other way around. There are a few distinct shapes that should get you off to a good start - Rho and Lambda are probably good starting points!
Cute! Loved the art, was fun for the first half, but getting to some of the tougher ones/less obvious ones made it a bit frustrating. Really wish the list would remove options that you had gotten earlier to make it a bit easier later. Overall really fun!
@shimmerscale thanks! I like those ones too. :-) @yubs i hear that! I even made it easier after some play testing. I didn’t remove the categories because some are repeated (when items have similar usages). But looking back it’d probably make sense to keep them 1:1, thanks for the feedback!
Wonderful game! I love this genre, and exploring an alien culture through it felt really fresh. Though on my first playthrough, I saved the three hardest items for last, so I had to start over to figure out what they were for by comparing them with the two more obvious ones.
@turbolaser Thank you! I wonder - which three items were the hardest? My playtester had his hardest ones but I made some adjustments to make them a bit more straightforward.
@turbolaser heh, I definitely get why thinking they lived outdoors would make one of those extra difficult. My playtester had trouble with Omega also, I meant to add it in more images to make it a bit more clear but, well, I forgot. Game jam and all. Thanks again for playing!
Wow, a deduction game, my favorite genre! I loved this game, had a lot of fun with it. The graves were probably the hardest for me to deduce, I've mostly got them by the process of elimination as they were my last object. I don't think I've had a lot of problems with any of the others. Anyway, I loved the little guys and their weird little things. Great job!
Really cute game! I'm not the best at this type of games, but maybe once you find out what an object is have that definition crossed off from the list? I didn't manage to get all of them so if some are using the same definition then it's fine! Really cosy overall, the art is adorable!
@pigeonic yeah, a couple of them are using the same answers - if I were able to make changes right now, I would probably change that to make it a bit easier. It's tough, when you make puzzle games you're always like "oh no I made it too easy" and then it's still too hard somehow 😅 thanks for playing!
This was very good! I had a lot of fun making connections in the beginning, and then started getting overwhelmed as I got towards the last few few objects in the list. First of all, I loved the art. The Beings were ridiculously whimsical and charming, and their creations had an almost Seussical quality to them. Great design work!
Second, I had a lot of fun with the progression of the item identification. First, there were constant dopamine hits as I quickly identified the easy items, and I enjoyed the later items which felt almost like solving a page out of Where's Waldo. When I finally spotted the the "don'tsinkie" (what I named the float), it was both such a relief, and also made me feel quite proud of my observational skills!
I did unfortunately run into a pretty rough issue in the last round of objects; I had Omega, Chi, and Kappa left at the end, and I was completely stumped by them. I found them on the board, but I didn't have enough context to identify their actual purpose. This was compounded by the fact that a lot of purposes ended up accidentally pairing with one another depending on context/interpretation (float and rest, entertainment and sport, improve appearance/improve health/correct behavior, house inhabitants/mark a grave), and I was never sure which of the three I had wrong. I ended up brute forcing them with every possible interpretation I could think of, which wasn't a very satisfying conclusion.
That doesn't take away from the fact that, up until that point, I really liked the game! That friction that could potentially be alleviated by removing uses from the dropdown list once there are no more objects to identify with them, but I'm not sure if that would swing too far in the opposite direction and make the last few items too *easy* to identify.
Finally, it was such a nice little touch to let folks come up with names for the various artifacts. :) My only piece of feedback there is that I wish there was a final screen showing all of the names that I gave to the objects, because I absolutely wanted to see screenshots of everyone else's names, and to show off my "great" names here.
Overall, well done, and thank you for sharing this game! I had a great time
One last question: What WAS the ridiculous thing that Dr. Fig said?
(Also my favorite being was this one, for their lackadaisical attitude)
@koolruz thank you so much for playing my game!! Totally agree about the endgame, but wasn't sure how to balance it without making the endgame too easy. I REALLY wanted to add in an ending page with all the names there, but didn't have time, so instead just made it so you can return and look at them yourself. Unsatisfying, I know! Game jams! Also didn't consider the possible synonyms cropping up there with entertainment/sport etc. I really appreciate the time and effort you took to make your review. I suppose in order to find out the ridiculous thing Dr Fig said, you'll have to wait for the sequel (that is also when I will find out).
I was surprised to spend as long as I did on it, but I really liked playing this. I do feel like some objects don't get enough context to help identify them, but having the list of options does help to consider what they could be. The difference between the blueprint sketch and the media sometimes makes it tricky to figure out what something is, but I guess that's the challenge.
This is really cute! I like how it integrates the worldbuilding directly into the gameplay concept. I managed to beat it, which means that the difficulty was reasonably fair. There was one thing that tripped me up a bit:
!> "entertain inhabitants" for the little triangular blocks threw me off, because the blocks are clearly too small to inhabit, so I'm not sure what "inhabitants" is doing here. It sort of makes sense for the VR goggles, but even then, just "entertainment" would have been clearer, I think.
I really enjoyed it overall! A very polished & positive experience.
I really love the art style of this game! It made me remind of some picture books I read as a kid. Searching for blueprint objects on the board feels like looking through my favorite comic books with a magnifying galss. The little Martian is so cute...but this poor guy looks like he's about to die. Someone save him!
@3lstmsinatrenchcoat fair point, I was just kind of using "inhabitants" as a catchall for "people" in that situation but looking back, it doesn't make much sense and I should have just used "entertain".
@bay-l don't worry he's just gone for a lil swim!!!
The concept of uncovering an ancient civilization through its fragmented documents is really compelling. It makes the act of deduction feel genuinely rewarding, like a real moment of archaeological discovery.
Very novel and fun concept for a game! You did a great job at depicting the objects in a way that lets you get creative thinking about them. I managed to figure most out, but failed on these three:
Controls to navigate the pages of the notebook could be a bit improved (like a prev page button) but overall very cool game. Loved the art style!
@oadt thanks for playing! There is a previous page button, can you please confirm that you weren't able to see it? If not, that's a bug, maybe a display issue, I'd like to look into it.
Otherwise, from left to right, some hints:
1. Think about where else you've seen purplish teardrop shaped things on the board (albeit bigger).
2. That one is a little on me because I meant to draw water flowing out of it and just didn't end up remembering to do that
3. This is in several places on the board, including in the backdrop of the apartment you're looking at, as well as in the dark blue nighttime scene.
the idea of studying a dead civilisation's tech through ads and blueprints is such a smart inversion of the theme, and the hand drawn art makes the whole archive feel like a real museum find. the cute little aliens are a lovely contrast to all that archaeology too. was it hard to keep the blueprints ambiguous enough to puzzle over but clear enough to solve? really lovely project.
Comments28
Anyway, I loved the little guys and their weird little things. Great job!
This was very good! I had a lot of fun making connections in the beginning, and then started getting overwhelmed as I got towards the last few few objects in the list. First of all, I loved the art. The Beings were ridiculously whimsical and charming, and their creations had an almost Seussical quality to them. Great design work!
Second, I had a lot of fun with the progression of the item identification. First, there were constant dopamine hits as I quickly identified the easy items, and I enjoyed the later items which felt almost like solving a page out of Where's Waldo. When I finally spotted the the "don'tsinkie" (what I named the float), it was both such a relief, and also made me feel quite proud of my observational skills!
I did unfortunately run into a pretty rough issue in the last round of objects; I had Omega, Chi, and Kappa left at the end, and I was completely stumped by them. I found them on the board, but I didn't have enough context to identify their actual purpose. This was compounded by the fact that a lot of purposes ended up accidentally pairing with one another depending on context/interpretation (float and rest, entertainment and sport, improve appearance/improve health/correct behavior, house inhabitants/mark a grave), and I was never sure which of the three I had wrong. I ended up brute forcing them with every possible interpretation I could think of, which wasn't a very satisfying conclusion.
That doesn't take away from the fact that, up until that point, I really liked the game! That friction that could potentially be alleviated by removing uses from the dropdown list once there are no more objects to identify with them, but I'm not sure if that would swing too far in the opposite direction and make the last few items too *easy* to identify.
Finally, it was such a nice little touch to let folks come up with names for the various artifacts. :) My only piece of feedback there is that I wish there was a final screen showing all of the names that I gave to the objects, because I absolutely wanted to see screenshots of everyone else's names, and to show off my "great" names here.
Overall, well done, and thank you for sharing this game! I had a great time
One last question: What WAS the ridiculous thing that Dr. Fig said?
(Also my favorite being was this one, for their lackadaisical attitude)
I like him
!> "entertain inhabitants" for the little triangular blocks threw me off, because the blocks are clearly too small to inhabit, so I'm not sure what "inhabitants" is doing here. It sort of makes sense for the VR goggles, but even then, just "entertainment" would have been clearer, I think.
I really enjoyed it overall! A very polished & positive experience.
@bay-l don't worry he's just gone for a lil swim!!!
thank you both for playing!
Controls to navigate the pages of the notebook could be a bit improved (like a prev page button) but overall very cool game. Loved the art style!
Otherwise, from left to right, some hints:
1. Think about where else you've seen purplish teardrop shaped things on the board (albeit bigger).
2. That one is a little on me because I meant to draw water flowing out of it and just didn't end up remembering to do that
3. This is in several places on the board, including in the backdrop of the apartment you're looking at, as well as in the dark blue nighttime scene.
Ah, now I got it, thanks! The third item was the one that I got totally wrong