The Message from Deep Space

the game is honestly amazing and i love it. whoever made the soundtrack was blessed by every musical genius and deity at once bc those songs, i dont remember the titles of most of them unfortunately [except for double helixes] but theyre all bangers. visual object also just takes me back to the days of math transmissions where i just had to solve some math. but back to the point. whats the game about? you play as a translator hired to help decode the messages of a recent fallen meteorite [proud of me, Akers?] . you are a part of a 4 member team, you included. your boss is Dr doppler. and your team members are: Akers, Bautista and Collins. Their names escape me now, but their characters sure dont. [apologies if i get something wrong, i have a poor memory] Doppler is quite a normal guy, he is a part of the materials team, though his main job is to manage our team. youll report to him every "week" [that is every several levels] and youll get a cutscene where everyone interacts [except you], your team members tell Doppler about what theyve found while Doppler keeps being curious and excited about what the meteorite told us [at first overestimating our progress but eventually getting used to what we learn]. Hes a really nice guy, as youll see by yourself in the game. Akers is an astronomer, having helped write a paper, being credited as a co-author, and then working for NASA [mostly doing coffee runs]. while being very good at what he does, his knowledge kinda ends there, as he is laughably bad at most other things [except coffee runs, presumably]. he often says dumb or illogical but funny things when we discover something new. this results in Akers being the butt of most jokes. but in the end, hes a good guy, and quite an important character as thanks to him we are even able to begin the game in lore. he struggles with his self worth, as he doesnt think himself a good astronomer [or good enough to be on the team] and thinks he has lost his place as he can no longer contribute anything meaningful. but Doppler comforts him on this by saying he didnt choose Akers for his skills in astronomy or reputation but by his character, diligence, not being afraid to say new ideas, etc. Bautista is a cynical computer engineer. hes knowledgeable in all things computer related, and thanks to him we get several computer upgrades, making our job easier. though he kind of outlives his usefullness as he doesnt do much later on. nevertheless, hes on the team to provide his own objective-ish and cold perspective, though clearly having an infatuation/obsession over computer related things and giving computers human traits [like him descrbing the 'median' as 'evil' as it requires the computer to sort the data [which is an 'expensive' thing for a computer to do]] Collins is the linguist of the team, not being that useful in the early stages but becoming much more important later on as you transition from math to sentences, stories and logic/pattern recognition puzzles. she has a few interesting stories on her hand, though i wont go in depth as to what they are. honestly, i think Collins is the characer ive been least interested in, as linguistics just isnt my forte. i find the fields of others more interesting. but i do still love her personality. she talks alot and asks important questions about everything. so whats the gameplay about? you have 2 screens: a menu screen, and a transmission screen. the menu screen has several menus [such as a calculator, a dictionary, a reference for basic info on a few different topics, etc] the transmission screen is where youll spend the most of your time looking. it shows you what the meteorite is transmitting and your task is to respond to its transmission with your own message. you got it right? you move on, otherwise you need to try again with another answer. at first you start with just numbers, then symbols, then words. going from pattern recognition, to math, to eventually learning how the aliens speak. the concept is simple to understand but extremely challenging in practice. which makes it a nice puzzle game. one i really enjoyed. theres also ALOT of content, several hours of it. im [looks at the steam time clock thing] 29 hours in and im at transmission 696. about ~70% of the way through. obviously, some transmission are not as well designed as others [such as the infamous "feel" transmission and in my opinion the "animal" and "plant" transmission] making you semi-required to join the discord server to find hints from others. besides those flaws, id say that this is my favorite game in a long long while as i really enjoyed it. the music is extremely cozy, as is the atmosphere. the characters are lovable, the graphics are pretty good too! the game has its issues, but theyre minor and far between. should you buy this game? if youve played games like chants of sennaar or homicipher [which is very similar to chants of sennaar and if you like CoS, you should absolutely play] and liked those, id think youll like this one. the concept is similar but different enough to be original and still be fun!! you will catch me listening to the soundtrack on my own. >:-j

What a great game! Can't wait to uncover it's secrets, definitely deserves more recognition.

is good

absolutely delightful translation puzzle game. lets you speculate and mull over words and find better meanings and it leads to some very fun implications. definitely recommended

This game did such a good job at meeting the concept. If you thought the premise of Arrival was cool and you wanted to be on the translation team, this is your chance. I can only wish more people would play it, thank you so much for making this for the world. It could be right up there with outer wilds for puzzle games that left such a wonderful memory for me.

This game is amazing. I learned new things. I remembered parts of math and science that I thought I had forgotten. Hundreds of "ah-ha" moments that add up to a deep sense of satisfaction.