The Message from Deep Space

Fantastically well thought out and thought provoking game! I loved the gameplay loop and characters, and by the time the game was wrapping up and my fellow scientists were reflecting on their time with the translation, I felt just as touched as they seemed to be. Definitely not for everyone, but if this game seems like the right kind of nerdy for you, then I 100% recommend trying it out!

This game is not a game. This a dream come true for me. In all media where some communication occurs between species it always goes something like "we started with math since it's the language of the universe, and then made our way up *cut* we now use interlingua." And it has always bothered me. Here, no shortcuts are taken, and that is an incredible undertaking. The meticulousness, the realism, the "no ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥" approach is astounding, and how do you mean i get to do it for real myself! Sitting before those two old screens has been my reason to wake up and not to sleep at night. When after hours of figuring out their numbers and math you read into the thickets of self-inflicted weird wordings, and recognise that now they mean something, they reference something beyond simple pattern-rule recognition has made me gasp, cry, scream and beg the game to never end. The youtuber i learnt of the game from has said "the 4 digits on the transmission meter worry me" and at the time i agreed, like who would want to do that much... Yeah, that person is me. This is a journey where your actions do indeed matter, where your resoning skill and ability to recognise meaning echo. And not for some arbitrary in game system checker, no, for your own ability to progress. You got the word slightly or quite off? You will probably have to return to its definition later to redefine it. No game had made me scroll through the logs and history with a genuine need to figure something out as much as this one. All the progress feels personal, because it is. You were the one standing behind every signe thing you understand now, and that feeling is miraculous. At last, my stem degree, years of lectures on random topics including linguistics, teaching natural sciences has paid off in a game where all that knowledge is actively needed to progress. Simplified, of course, but makes sense - the aliens need to lay the groundowrk and progress, not discuss set theory or chemichal reactions beyond whats nesessary. Naturally, I have some criticisms. the painful calculator did not have to stay so painful. scrolling in the whiteboard would have been amasing, the "autolog" message before transmissions is mad annoying and redundant. But overall none of it really matters, since this is a gem made with so much love to all the sciences, with so much respect to the mind, and a very good approximation of a realisctic scenario where communication has to arise from nothingness, that i struggle to imagine what could be better. I am struggling to convey my amazement to my friends, they seem to not be as aroused and alerted by the premise not the gameplay, yet i strongly recommend it to try for every single person. This is a product of great love and passion and at least for me it won it's place in the pantheon of most impactful media ever.

Highly recommended and very original logical deduction puzzle game, which can be very challenging at times. Just started act 3, I'm hooked.

Неперевершена гра з неймовірною глибиною. Якщо вам небайдужі загадки та наука, - вона для вас)

Amazing game. Linguistics detective game that gets you from numbers through physics to love and aspirations and hopes, building on top of words already solved. I was very happy with the length of the game: where games usually surprise you by ending soon, this one keeps going. Thank you, Applesinmypants!

You know the Voyager Golden Record? If not, go look it up right now. It's a metal plate that was included with the Voyager space probe. A document containing information about humans, about us. Just in case some day, perhaps a million years from now, someone else in the universe finds our probe. Information about who we are, where we're from... and even, perhaps, what we love. But if you were truly an alien, understanding that record wouldn't be so easy. You'd have to start from first principles -- from the basic math embedded in the record itself, to figure out what it all meant. So, what if humanity received someone *else's* Golden Record? A document sent out into the void, in the hopes that it might one day be read by someone, somewhere? And what if you were tasked with decoding it? Have you ever wanted to do that, to be the first to try to unravel a message from the stars? Well, now you can. From the first ~175 or so messages, you might imagine this to be more of a programming/puzzle game. This is not entirely wrong, but... it's deceptive. After all, the hard part is first establishing a common language, starting from the basics of math and logic. But once you have that common language, well... you'll see. You are in for a truly incredible treat. I keep a shortlist of games that are so unique and special that there is literally nothing else in the world like them, and probably never will be ever again. This game, without a doubt, goes on that list.

Extremely good game. The best execution of the "you decipher an unknown language" concept *by far*. Lots of science and math. This is the perfect game for any nerd. The game is like 24h straight of puzzle-solving and language deciphering. It is surprisingly easy for how deep it goes (which is good! It feels like the lack of difficulty comes from the game teaching ideas to you very well, rather than from giving too many hints). If you're not well-versed in basic math and science, it may be more difficult. There are one or two minor plot-holes with how the alien information is deciphered and such, presumably there to make gameplay feel smoother, overall though the game is very good about presenting information in a realistic way that shows the difference in perspective you'd expect from aliens. The game adds in several QOL features over the course of it that make the langauge easy to work with, for instance being able to define your own words for things and type them in. I think it's a little bit dissapointing that you can't toggle these off, mostly just because I think it would be cool to go back and see what all the new things look like in the old system of input just to see how far you've come. There's a lot of dialog in the game. Some of it is hints to certain puzzles, which are toggleable and generally don't seem to show up by default. Even with these turned off, some of the dialog will sort of hint to meaning, but in a way that doesn't feel immersion breaking (it usually feels like things you already figured out, and so it fits in to the dialog naturally). There's character interactions which I found somewhat interesting but I could see falling flat for some people, especially since if you don't use the hints it doesn't always feel like the other characters are really contributing. I feel like this made the dialogue feel awkward at the beginning of the game, but over the course of the game it became easier to know the other characters and it felt more meaningful. The game does a great job of covering a lot of different science, math, and lingustics, and does a good job worldbuilding for the limited communication it provides. TL;DR: Amaze amaze amaze -138 -86 -14 -44 0 -195 -238 -85 -15 -100 -213 -2 -2 -138 -86 -14 -45 -86 -46 -196 -85 -15 -100 -108 -152 -2 -2 -138 -86 -14 -45 -210 -30 -45 -199 -15 -100 -237 -213 -2 -2