The Message from Deep Space

this rock making my brain do backflips

First contact with extant life from another world, & it's the aliens sending us their math homework. All jokes aside, I love this game. The characters seem simple on the surface, but their little conversations, in-jokes and quirks really make you connect with them. I can't believe that within the span of a couple hours they had me go from jeering at Dr. Akers to genuinely empathizing and rooting for him. I also wanna shout out the OST, the music is actually really nice to vibe to while puzzling over a new transmission. I'm definitely relying on walkthroughs to make progress, but the atmosphere and story are enough to make it still an enjoyable puzzle game

YOU ME BE REJOICE DO! :-) the idea is super charming. Decoding an alien language and building an understanding starting from parroting what they say, to following patterns, to math, to nature, to philosophy and civilization one new translation at a time. The fact that you build your own dictionary and try to make sense of it is great. Unfortunately I think the game is a bit too smart for its own good. It gives great simple explainers to the simpler concepts of Maths, Logic, and even Chemistry, but in some later levels it just doesn't make any sense even after seeing the translation (you cannot convince me that ideology, belief and morals is NOT exactly one and the same, no matter how much the translations said they aren't). Due to the wide ranging of subjects I also don't think the difficulty curve of the puzzles is that good. You go from a super complicated puzzle requiring you to write a sequence of 5-6 commands to a simple true-or-false question (mostly when switching subjects, but sometimes even within the same subject). However, I must still praise the cleverness of that puzzle design and how even though the player has full freedom to make their own dictionary, the overall sentences/structures/sentiments still make sense. The other scientists you work with are also very well written, both providing some comedic levity and insightful observations about who/what/how the alien species is.

This is a really smart game. It feels extremely real, like what Aliens would actually use to teach you their language. I'm still at the basics of logic deduction but it's really making you feel smart.

im not yet done with this game but its already feels so incredible every time i snap the connections into place and understand what the new undefined signals mean. the sense of connection to the aliens you get every time they explain something in a silly obscure way and you go "OHHHH i know exactly what those little bastards mean" is so special and i really reccomend this game to anyone for that reason alone. even besides that theres just so much heart to it. the bonds you form with the rest of the translation team and doppler feel very sweet and real, and i always feel compelled to write down proper notes in the diary at the end of each week. to really feel like im part of the team

An exceptional game. Dr Doak recommends!

The game starts off a bit slow; the beginning felt to me as mostly refreshing math/physics/chemistry knowledge from high-school and establishing some basic communication primitives. If that was all there was to it, I would have probably thought it was a good game, but not enough to recommend it. However, at some point this game changes [spoiler]probably when they send their first self-portrait[/spoiler]: It becomes much less of a quiz, and more of a very rewarding search for common understanding and meaning. I believe life longs for life, and this game reminds me of it almost on every transmission past a certain point. In puzzle/deduction games I usually end up disabling all hints and stuff. But this game has such amazing dialogue that I didn't mind if it occasionally recommended solutions: I really just wanted to know what Dr. Bautista, Dr. Akers, Dr. Collins, and Dr. Doppler had to say! The developer crafted a unique voice for each character, to the point I find myself in internal arguments with these characters while reading their different suggestions. Sometimes I appreciate Dr. Bautista's programmer-style focused on reducing verbosity, but other terms require the added nuance Dr. Collins' captures with each of her suggestions. And Dr. Akers? He is a really good astronomer. Personally, I would like it if the game UI were a bit more feature rich: I miss the ability to pin certain pages so as to have multiple open simultaneously or having a central note pad with links between notes, words, and transmissions. But these are minor grievances that can be addressed by just pulling out a notebook IRL. I am not done with this game, I estimate I am roughly around the halfway point ([spoiler]transmission 514 [/spoiler]). But I already wanted to share my thoughts on this wonderful game. I will update this review once I finish with the game with my final impressions. In the meantime, I strongly recommend it.