Signal Desk

matt-giuca 2026-04-20 04:31

Really polished Papers-Please-like. I like the mood, the tactile controls (especially how the camera jumps between different views but you can still see everything in the periphery).

For me the actual gameplay was a little confusing and repetitive. I was never really sure what I was supposed to do with the ones that neither said to accept or reject, and the summaries at the end weren't really clear about what things I did were "good" and which were "bad" (like missing bad info, is that good or bad?). The complexity never really appeared so I was just accepting and rejecting based on names. At one point it said to reject a certain frequency which made me go "aha I can see how this is going to grow in complexity and become a challenge to keep all the rules in mind", but that frequency didn't come up, and there were no further rules other than names. So I'm a bit mixed on it.

Awesome job on the presentation though, I love it.

manabreak 2026-04-20 06:36

Awesome work! The frontloaded instructions felt a bit overwhelming at first, but it was pretty intuitive once you got to play. There's definitely something worthwhile here if you're going to continue working on it. I'd love to see it themed in a WW2 or cold war era style, with accepted and rejected messages affecting something outside your bunker. Cool game all in all!

jk5000 2026-04-20 07:27

The idea is fun and I had fun trying it. I can't say I totally got the story, and found the gameplay a confusing. But overall a good jam game.

nathmate 2026-04-20 08:32

I like the idea, as @matt-giuca said it's very reminiscent of Papers Please and it's easy to imagine elaborating on it in that vein.

On day three my inbox glitched out and I couldn't progress. 2026-04-20-181738_1154x650_scrot.png

stasm 2026-04-21 21:39

What a polished gem of a game. The mood is perfect and it reminded me of an old dogfight simulator with a very similar looking main menu screen. The gameplay isn't too hard, but it's engaging and I like how it creates opportunities for story-telling. I could see a whole narrative play out via radio messages, especially given how we're supposed to trust certain actors but not others. I played to the end just to see if Lynx was actually the good guys. Were they trying to warn me about Orion and prevent civilian casualties? I'm not sure if it was intended, but the instruction on the sticky note from day 4 onwards were all the same and very simple to follow. I liked how at some point you introduced more conditions, like the wavelength, but then it seemed like you dropped this idea.

frib 2026-04-23 15:27

I really liked how it told a story. I played through it twice to see if there would be a difference when disobeying the notepad orders. The messages seem to stay the same, but the ending changes, so that's pretty neat :D would be cool if the messages and the notepad orders would change based on your choices/failures, but even without that it's a very cool game and I enjoyed my two playthroughs

Good stuff!

fnelix 2026-04-23 22:20

Thank you all for playing!

@matt-giuca @jk5000 @stasm You are totally right to be a little confused by the gameplay. I was going to introduce increasingly complicated rules, and have your choices have at least some meaningful (narrative) consequences after each day leading up to day 6. Then goal was a hinted-at moral choice that runs counter to the obvious puzzle mechanics. But I ran out of time, so the presentation of consequences is almost totally missing and the puzzles after 2-3 days unfinished. I then tried to salvage the gameplay by some ill-advised and tired last minute changes to scoring and reporting, which made things worse. Really glad that you managed to see past these issues and find some potential in the game!

@frib Super cool that you checked out both endings!

noobman64 2026-04-23 23:53

Great work! I don't know if there is a name for it but I really like the way that instead of having a UI element floating around, You present the code names on a piece of paper that remains visible on multiple views. As you have mentioned in your responses, the time limit makes it very hard to really tie things together but I see a lot of potential in the narrative aspect too. My highlight in that regard was when in day 6 I got a message that said Unknown: Please stop this" 👀 . Pretty simple in the grand scheme of things but enough to make the player think "What am I doing?" and "are we the baddies?" :sweat_smile:

liquid 2026-04-24 10:13

I love the mood, especially the music. It feels very polished, and the presentation with the radio and its controls works really well. As others have mentioned, it’s reminiscent of Papers, Please, and if you continue developing it, leaning into the moral choice narrative direction you hinted at would be a great idea.

zbrogdom 2026-04-26 11:17

A refined game in every respect and pleasant music that sets the atmosphere of the game

lenny-rudeberg 2026-04-26 11:41

Great game, had to run through it once to get a good understanding of how it all works, but I had a nice clean run on my second attempt. Really like the concept here, it has a very intriguing espionage narrative experience which you were able to tell through just using a radio and notepad, I can imagine the idea could easily be expanded in a larger game. GG!

sledzik 2026-04-26 13:45

Realy good game, nice graphics, realy enjoyed the sound design of the radio, the knob was somwhat wacky to controll but its alright, maybe let it be controlled with scroll, great job

snk 2026-04-26 14:13

Nice idea! I especially liked the fact that I could see what to accept and reject when reviewing the documents, instead of going back and forth. The graphics and music were nice, also the transitions when moving from an area to another are suuuper smooth and satisfying. I couldn't quite understand if I had to reject or ignore documents coming from codenames not mentioned in the "daily rules". Other than that, solid entry :smile:

crowelian 2026-04-28 15:25

Cannot play! The music starts but the loading bar is only shown in the screen... Gave it more time and still nothing... no errors in console...

pimeko 2026-04-30 00:22

Nice concept! I liked the fact that signals seem to create stories at some point. Having absolute no memory whatsoever I kind of struggle to remember previous instructions but nice work :)

2026-05-03 12:35

I really enjoy the atmosphere music created by the game! At the beginning, it takes a little while to get the hang of it, and some of the instructions could be simpler. However, the game is highly playable and very interesting. I can sense that the author intended to introduce a lot of diverse and complex gameplay elements, but the time is just too short, which is a pity! I'm looking forward to your more refined works in the future.

mathemagics 2026-05-06 15:51

It's a very immersive game, enjoyable to interact with the environment, and a nice core loop Thank you for the game!