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A jam submission

The Journal of Ambrose BrantView game page

Submitted by MechaFizz — 8 hours, 53 minutes before the deadline
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The Journal of Ambrose Brant's itch.io page

Results

CriteriaRankScore*Raw Score
Playability#15.0005.000
Cleverness#15.0005.000
Theme#15.0005.000
Artistic Style#15.0005.000

Ranked from 1 rating. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.

Judge feedback

Judge feedback is anonymous.

  • I was genuinely blown away by the creativity here. The spin on the theme was incredible. I would really like to see this game continue and see where it goes in the story. The GDD was well done. While this game may not be for everyone, I genuinely enjoyed my time in ArcheOS. I really hope to see more

Did you include your Game Design Document as a Google Drive link?
Yes

Seriously... did you include your Game Design Document?
Yes

Is your game set to Public so we can see it?
Yes

Tell us about your game!
This initial iteration of the game includes 4 Vigenère enciphered texts, entries from the titular journal, and a toolkit to decipher them. Pressing spacebar at the beginning skips the intro dialogue.

The narrative setting is an ambiguous time period in an alternate history, at a fictional college in Mortlake, England.

Extra Notes
While not the game I initially set out to make, I'm fairly happy with the results. I do not, however, expect anyone else to find it terribly appealing. If anyone does, I'd accept it as a happy accident.

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Comments

Submitted

I am interested in in deciphering the texts, but I don't have alot of experience with deciphering, and i've never heard of Vigenère.. Should learn about it online before playing this? Or is every piece of information required available in the game?

Developer

I did my best to make all necessary information at least minimally available in-game. If any in-game explanations are lacking or unclear, that is unintended. All the tools for deciphering the texts should be available in-game as well, although a pen and paper or open notepad would be helpful to keep track of key letters as you work through them. I also did not do a thorough job of play testing each text's deciphering, so I may have accidentally made some of them arbitrarily difficult or tedious.

The intended gameplay loop is to begin by typing "scry" (without quotation marks, followed by enter) to get a list of commands, then "scry <command>" to get detailed information on a command. For example, "scry vc" will tell how to use the vc (Vigenère cipher) command, including an explanation of how the Vigenère cipher works. Repeat for each command and you should be able to deduce how to use them to begin cracking each ciphertext.

Submitted

I have never added a game on itchio to a collection to be viewed later, but I did for this one because I am very intrigued but presently don't the brain glycogen to peel apart its layers.

Developer(+1)

That's quite the high compliment...! I think?

I had a couple friends playtest it this weekend. Based on their results, I believe I may have severely misjudged the difficulty.

Submitted

I did mean it as a compliment! Im very interested in what it has going on, I just need a dark room and some silence to dive in and immerse myself.