carrerino 2026-04-20 18:55
What a mood! What vibes! Great job. One of the best!
Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD59 → The Dark Spots in Space
By Bestdtang, babyfoodstudios, , , and
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overall | 34 | 4.22 | 48 | |
| Fun | 88 | 3.95 | 48 | |
| Innovation | 69 | 4.02 | 48 | |
| Theme | 176 | 4.14 | 48 | |
| Graphics | 160 | 4.25 | 49 | |
| Audio | 65 | 4.14 | 49 | |
| Humor | 244 | 3.30 | 41 | |
| Mood | 9 | 4.57 | 48 |
What a mood! What vibes! Great job. One of the best!
LOVE the minimal graphics, and how well guessing the words went for me on my first few tries. A lot of cool potential here and uniqueness.
@tenthousandfireants Glad you like the graphics! Our artist did a great job capturing the retro-futuristic look we were going for. A few good guesses and the game opens itself up :wink:
Really good setting, love the art bigtime, super clean. Well done to your team :)
Neat idea! Got a couple of them but not all, and no idea what fraction of the recordings I've found. I wish the messages displayed faster. Lots of waiting between guessing. Noticed one message (mentioning nanobots) didn't fit inside the text box. Enjoyed the retro computer feel, interesting to have a game experience made to feel like it's something not gamey. Great work, overall very polished!
Suspect the slow pace would vibe better if I didn't need to get to bed, it's been a long three days!
Cool! Loved revealing the story piece by piece. The recordings were super well done and really got me into the story of it all. Great work!
@mountaingoose Thank you for the kind words, our artist is super talented!
@wles Get some rest! We're all barely standing hahaha. The team's working on some UI updates for 1.5x 2x speed for the future. Our programmer's looking into the nanobots bug. Thank you for the feedback
@mostlypants Glad you enjoyed a slightly different approach to storytelling!
As someone else said the slow messages was a major turnoff, perhaps just clicking once could reveal all the text? Though I suppose the audio is helpful sometimes. That was annoying, but I still found myself invested in the story for around 15 minutes. I didn't finish obviously but I may come back once that is sorted out. I like the ambiance too nice job.
@oxnh We just released a new build! First play is 2x'd, also you can drag the progress bar on the track to revisit information you may have missed. Give it another try when you get the chance, get back to work archivist ;)
Game mechanism is very interesting!
Cool mood, I got invested in the story but got stuck on the big big word. But at least I have potatoes ;) Nice entry
@crak Potato ftw!!!
Creative game mechanics paired with realistic, high-quality audio.
Woaaaaaa!
Very cool stuff, I love the idea of revealing the story piece by piece! Good job :)
@gecko64 Thank you! We worked really hard to make a build-your-own-mystery :D
Such a touching game design! They actually created sound effects for each voice line, which is such a pleasant surprise~ The visuals are made up of simple geometric shapes, but they feel very sophisticated. I really like this game!
I wish I could play more of the game. The style, mood, and audio are really great, but I'm stuck on the "CRITICAL ALERT, [########] pod..." clip and I just can't tell what it is suppose to be >_<
Edit: OKAY, I figured out I could keyword search to find more clips to fill out more of the store and find key words! This is really well done. the audio work is really amazing. Incredible job!
@hmeo Thank you!!! I played an enjoyed your guys' game as well and realized that I'm terrible at reading facial expressions. hahahah
How did you manage to do so much in such a short time? The polish is exceptional. The sound design, the shaders when you decrypt a file... Great work. It truly embodies the theme.
@strega That's a tough one! Here's a hint: If saunas are heating pods, Abe's in a [#########] pod. Probably needs to de-frost from being below 20 Kelvin. :)
@fendri We set our sights on the stars :D. But honestly, Serena's a sound design aficionado and both our programmers are heavy hitters.
Really like this. Graphics are great and the audio is good. Don't think I've ever played a voice acted game in a jam before!
I am, however, stuck! I have 21 out of 30 logs.
Some hints would be nice 😀
I played way longer than I expected. It said I had 96% and 30/30? I couldn't find any more clips and all the clips I had seemed complete. Either way, I had a lot of fun with it :D
@teddyreid Glad you enjoyed it! Here's a hint: try searching any interesting word that appears in transcripts, they don't have to be solved keywords! Some blurred words often appear in other clips, used in the same context/syntax.
@strega Oh my!! Thanks for playing, completionist achievement incoming! Did you get to filling in the obituary report on the other tab? What did you make of [] []'s life?
I filled it all out. So many potatoes xD
[_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _] are the answers to the universe. Took some liberties from Andy Wier's Martian xD
Such a creative gameplay loop! Using audio transcription as an actual puzzle mechanic to dig deeper into the database is a stroke of genius. You took a very unique approach for this jam. Awesome work!
好喜欢这个录音解密机制！有一种在听英语听力的感觉。喜欢这个音效反馈声音和叙事，文本语音特别有感觉！非常喜欢的设计！ I love this recording and decoding mechanism! It feels like listening to an English listening exercise. I love the sound feedback and the narrative; the text and audio are so immersive! A design I absolutely adore!
@accelerate0814 Thank you for the kind words, hope you enjoyed the journey!
@awwwz A lot of our team are Chinese, this gamejam let us get some exercise in hhhh. 谢谢！
I like the idea and sound. Great job!
Not my type of game but I liked the graphics and the sound design. Great overall tone and moods.
I am playing for 2 hours along... and can`t reach 50%. some words are too specific i think. but style and polished state of a game made me real satisfied)
Such a cool art style! Very interesting decryption
Got very invested in uncovering the story and ended up getting 99% and 30/30! Very cool game with immersive graphics, audio and storytelling. Congrats to your team !
@venomousmouse Thank you!
@awp Thank you, we tried to lean hard into immersion.
@alexander-stepanov Let us know waht you're stuck on, happy to give some [hints]
@alano-r Our artists worked hard on building a cohesive experience, thank you :)
@sooda I'm etching a completionist obelisk for you and all our 100%-ers, thank you for taking your time, we really appreciate it!
@babyfoodstudios i`ve opened an archive and finished 24/30. i am struggling with embryo [....]. and !>[Solanum] [...]. Also USS [.......] [.....]
Really nice atmosphere, I had a good time trying to understand the lore !
Hi all, we've just pushed an update and it's playable now. Our programmer made an oopsie in the percentages, those who reached 99% actually completed the game. Maybe the 1% were the potatoes we ate along the way?
@alexander-stepanov The man on the ship's embryo code is AA76, there's a standard succession in both embryo naming and numbering. Potato's scientific name is [Solanum] [###], Classification + Place of Origin - the planet the little guy originated from. you'll have luck in context cluing it in. For USS [#######] [#####], take a look at Oct 11th, 2027
@azsteak Thank you for taking your time archivist, glad you enjoyed your time with SONUS!
Very cool and also very polished! The overall feel is great! First search I did "Potato", did not disappoint :D
I got the vibe of Her Story game, very interesting concept and such a vibe! Loved it!
@jo-bettaque Thank you! Potato ftw!
@eseniia-no Good catch, one of our many inspirations. Thanks for playing!
I wasn't expecting to get as engrossed as I did! I did get stumped in a few places, but not enough to get super frustrated. The only minor issues I ran into were how searching re-ordered the list, I think having them fixed order by date might've been something useful. And one of the long transmissions went out of the text container.
I had lots of fun piecing the story together, great job.
Love the atmospheres! Though I'm not English mother language speaker and the puzzles are really hard for me, I cleared the game and composed the game with LLM's help. I really love this lonely sci-fi story, it's cruel, melancholic but beautiful. The mood is conveyed so well.
And I think my game has quite similar aesthetics with yours! My game also tells a story about universe and loneliness, and also have word puzzle elements. Have a try if you are interested! :heart: :sparkles:
b6222306-c55e-4bf1-ae34-9381ef059cac.png
@nondev Thank you for the valuable feedback! Our team's working on getting a sort by function - last solved, last acquired, etc. We'll also have a look at the text overflow.
@rubatotree Thank you for spending so much time on our game, can imagine how hard it is for ESL speakers. I'll check out your game when I get home!
Your team is impressive somehow made this in 3 days it is a looooot of quality work, good job!
(Also I reaced 71% 27/30, the code aa76 what does 76 mean? And the USS spaceship name, Idk how to unlock Oct11th...
Also the team has a lot of Chinese? What's the background like, I'm quite curious... Are you guys studying abroad or like idk, I mean, this is a very English English game didn't expect that
@wo-ri-gou-le 71% is good, well done! 76 is a call back to 1776, US independence day. 77 is my lucky number and I wanted to set it up somehow, saving it for Beth, BB77 if we ever decide to expand this universe.
We're predominately Chinese, spread across a few timezones, working asynchronously. Good games are a universal language, localization just makes it more approachable.
I'm not sure if it was just me but I didn't get any voice messages. The file played but I didn't hear anything.
Still closed the case though!
So far, this is the [####] I've played on this jam! I would like to see your [####] on Steam or something in the future. You're so cool guys! Nice [####]!
@cornex We're working towards a Steam release [####]. Thank you archivist, point your ear towards [#####]!
@echo-team Intuition Lvl 100, wecouldn't replicate the audio issue though.
@babyfoodstudios Thank you for the hints! I finished the game and absolutely love it. Very nice job!
@alexander-stepanov Hope you enjoyed the journey archivist!
The best entry I have played yet!
I have the same audio issue some other comments reported. Maybe the information that it was the web version on the ldjam site on Firefox (on Windows) might help tracking down the problem?
Nevertheless, I got 90% for the audio logs and decided on a solitary sacrifice :handshake:
@bumble No wrong choices! Well done, sorry you had issues with the audio, our team's taking a look at it right now. We'd love for you to experience the game with sound! Set your sights on the stars archivist!
I didn't expect to find myself getting into this but, after slowly piecing/guessing things together for 10 minutes and letting the story unravel, I was hooked,, amazing work!
@jawdan Thanks for taking your time to play! Glad the universe could draw you in, godspeed archivist!
This is seriously good. I got so invested that I spent 2-3 hours completing the entire game. I loved piecing together the story and cross-referencing the entries to figure out the words. Kind of reminded me of Outer Wilds!
Here's my result:
case closed.png
I got all the words except this one. I tried everything I could think of - could you please tell me what word this is supposed be? :sweat_smile:
difficult word.png
Honestly, fantastic job, I don't think I've ever been this engrossed by a jam game.
@theoratkin Great job archivist! Abe finds a human [#####] on his last planet walk and brings it on board. It gives him space lung cancer. We're working towards a Steam release, with more stories of embryos and potatoes to come!
@babyfoodstudios I cannot believe myself :face_palm: I thought it was referring to Potato. Guess I should've paid attention to the date!
pretty cool game, actually. I liked the artstyle and the overall "vibes" strangely though it's quite unique overall in this jam I met something simular... That makes me wonder how the "theme" affects visual style... Hmmm... I guess we'll never know! (just my personal thoughts)
@crimsontrouper We've played a lot of games this jam that took the same approach. Art style wise, our artist had free reign and did a great job! 'Signal' can be narrow at times, when we were brainstorming we had a few ideas on the board Firewatch, space, signals from the depths of Mariana Trench. Thanks for playing!
Emotional... Quite the atmosphere.
@thesmellofoxygen Thank you!
Entry so good I fell to my knees! As a big Sam Barlow fan this hit the spot
@luka420 Thank you archivist! We're big fans of Her Story as well!