drtizzle 2026-04-20 16:25
I wish I knew what to do, but I have no clue :sweat_smile:
I did the tutorial, then I looked at the instructions on the page, and some things happened on screen. But I don't know if it was good, and what to do next.
Sorry!
Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD59 → Terminal Espionage
By frib
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overall | 183 | 3.31 | 26 | |
| Fun | 264 | 2.60 | 26 | |
| Innovation | 92 | 3.58 | 26 | |
| Theme | 77 | 4.08 | 27 | |
| Graphics | 112 | 3.64 | 27 | |
| Audio | 119 | 3.38 | 27 | |
| Humor | 169 | 2.21 | 25 | |
| Mood | 41 | 3.94 | 27 |
I wish I knew what to do, but I have no clue :sweat_smile:
I did the tutorial, then I looked at the instructions on the page, and some things happened on screen. But I don't know if it was good, and what to do next.
Sorry!
I love the visual and the retro typing vibe. It feels really sitting like in such a control station. The learning curve is a bit hard though. The monitor glitches are really super, yet it's a bit too frequently done - maybe the command monitor could be working properly and some of the other monitors are bad ? :) Plus, the sound is really amazing, totally brings the right mood. Great submission, congrats!
I enjoy the clandestine atmosphere created and think it ties in with the theme well. Methodically taking control of different points and drawing circles to reveal the secret base did give me a good feeling, like I was playing a simulation game. Each screen has the bubble shape to it which is a nice detail. I wasn't able to intercept a message with the password though despite overlapping three circles and crossing DRA 1 over the intersection.
I LOVE THIS GAME!!!
Seriously, I was having sooooo much fun until I tried "c cipher set key june" and then it blew up with an exception that I am so sorry I did not capture and paste. But it's okay I should move on to testing other games anyway :)
I love puzzles, I love terminal games, I love feeling like a cool spy. I was mystified until I read the tutorial below (I tried reading it in game but I couldn't scroll back up lol). Having it written on paper below the screens would be great since you can look around at your cave.
But anyway, this is definitely my favorite game so far this year, I played it for like a half hour, I would 100% play a full version of this with more of a story and more refined initial experience. Also I almost said "amazing work y'all" and then I saw that this is a compo game so I'm even more impressed. GREAT JOB!
Thanks for playing, all!
@drtizzle Very understandable! by the time I was halfway done with creating the very first mission I already knew I had way too many commands and that this wouldn't be easy to play :') I'm glad you gave it a try, though :D
@hotaloca If you want, you can disable the glitching with "degauss". I like the idea of the command window being somewhat immune to the glitching, good idea!
@chomby hmm... Did you have the right frequency? Also, was this the target that you were given the details of, or was this the hidden other one that you need to find? In any case, I'm glad you made it that far :D
EDIT: Oops, this is a bug. Luckily it's one of the final steps in the game. I put a workaround on the itch page but you've essentially completed the game, congrats!
@kristinamay oops! Yeah that cipher only accepts numbers as a key, and I guess I didn't properly sanitize its input lol. My bad! I'm glad you had fun though! I had so many wild ideas for this that I just couldn't fit in the two days available, lol
EDIT: the cipher should sanitize your input and I just tried to reproduce your crash. It's apparently the command you've given, which is slightly incorrect (should be "c cipher key 6", without "set". "set" is for setting the cipher type). I'll upload a fix for it soon, thanks for reporting!
Very ambitious concept, the terminal interface reminds me of Duskers and the triangulation stuff of Highfleet. I like the idea, but the execution is a bit clunky. Making a good CLI is quite hard, even for people used to interacting with them. There are silent failures on malformed input which is always frustrating, players' (or users') input should always have feedback even if it's just a generic error message (though the more informative the better).
Very good mood and music, really puts you in that place and creates an impeccable atmosphere. I liked the effects, but I think I would make screen flickering quicker.
Though like the others, I found the game quite hard to grasp, but I am getting there and will explore more after work. Post mortem actually explains a lot and makes me understand why did you go with these choices.
Though I agree that it feels very ambitious, so, it feels like one of the rare entries where it would probably make sense to focus on it fully after the rating period ends and turn it into a full feature game, I think it could be a very interesting one, and could find its specific audience!
This is a fantastic implementation of the theme, very ambitious for sure.
The instructions in the game page were a godsend, and I wouldn't have got very far without them. I think if you'd have managed to get that level of tutorialisation into the game itself, people would likely have a much easier time. But alas for a compo entry, this is extremely impressive
I was able to get up to the point where I was hunting for the codeword for the enemy station in 1650. I had picked up and plotted 2 points on 2400, but I couldn't find a 3rd nor was I successful in listening on on that frequency at the intersection of the two points I was able to plot.
Despite not getting further that that, I still enjoyed sussing it out alot. Thank you.
@nathmate I remember Duskers! I played that like 10 years ago lol. Haven't played Highfleet but it looks interesting! Agreed on your feedback for the terminal, I sometimes let it silently fail because I didn't have time to cover all cases. Thanks for playing!
@dzejpi Thank you! After any game jam I ask myself "is it worth it to continue working on this game?" and often the answer is "no", for various reasons. I've done a bunch of game jams over the last few years and this is one of the few where I think the answer is a "maybe". So, we'll see :D
@slippers Yeah I wanted to add that in the game but I just didn't have the time for it. Definitely needs a proper onboarding system or interactive tutorial. As for the puzzle, you're on the right track. If you want a hint:
!> That station is not broadcasting continuously, but it's on a 30 second interval loop. If you keep pointing at its location (which should be around -35, 24), you should see the message (on freq 2400 and with both the dira and the text on)
If you solve that, you'll have the final clue but sadly I managed to break the last step of the puzzle so you've pretty much completed all the content currently in the game :D
I got stuck a bit in unfortunately, but I did enjoy my stay after the initial and somewhat overwhelming experience. The style and atmosphere was really cool, the sim aspect very nice. I did wish there were some QoL improvements like press up to rework previous command (especially when trying to rotate the directional antenna correctly). And I do wish I could have had the instructions in the game a bit more, maybe a manual next to the screens, to not break the immersion as much.
Play-through with more thoughts: https://youtu.be/kDc-UfJ65BU
@local-minimum thank you so much for that video! :D there's some amazing insights in how you learn to control the game and it really shows where my game needs some much needed improvements :')
Near the end you were on the right track, but you assumed that the outpost would be sending text constantly. It isn't, it only sends you a response if you transmit the right codeword, either unencrypted or encrypted with the right cipher. You managed to do it once, but at that point you had two radars listening to text, which is why all the new displayed text was doubled. As for the cipher, at this point you were supposed to use the caesar cipher with the current month (in-game, top right).
The lack of in-game feedback really hurt your progress, because it was hard to tell if it was part of the puzzle or a mistake on your part. I definitely should've added more feedback when entering invalid commands, so I'm sorry that you had to go through all this :') it really revealed the flaws in my game right now. And I also spotted some bugs that I was unaware of :D
Thanks again! I learned a lot from your playthrough, and I hope you enjoyed it despite the (completely justified) frustrations <3
Wow, what an incredible atmosphere! I’m a sucker for terminal emulators and this really nailed that 'clandestine spy' vibe. The retro visuals and monitor glitches created a nice experience. While the learning curve is steep, the game is still just great.
Nice atmosphere you built. The terminals looked really cool as well. The game was a bit too textheavy, especially during the tutorial, for my liking but its still a good game.
Nice atmosphere, but reading plenty of text hurts. Tutorial emulator implies you could interact with it like with a terminal. But you can't press up to get last command, for example. And trying to reopen tutorial gives last page only, which is a bug, I guess
incoprehensible, but seems fun?
https://youtu.be/CXVxHB-cF4Q
I usually don't call it quits without beating an LD game but after an hour of not having cleared the tutorial I had to give up ;_;. The concept and overall presentation is cool and I understand the obscurity is necessary for immersion, but I strongly recommend uploading a video walkthrough.
Very cool and ambitious! I kind of liked the terminal style controls, although I agree some QoL features would help. Reading your description I see you had even more ambitious plans with this game and I think signal manipulation and more tactile controls and of course more puzzles would suit the concept. But totally understandable that you could not fit this into the jam. Anyway, very nice entry!
@alaah I'm so sorry you went through all that. I don't know what went wrong, but at 26 minutes when you did "c t basement" it definitely should've done something and would have told you the next step. You were on the right track. The other frequencies you were experimenting with were part of the next task, but without any guidance from HQ it's impossible to progress. Sorry for wasting an additional 30 minutes of your time :'( it's my fault not yours
@metalim the technology to press up just wasn't there yet :') and yeah, tutorial not resetting is a bug. Thanks for playing!
@fnelix yeah I scrapped a lot and had to cut a bunch of corners and now the players are suffering :') thanks for playing!
thank you for adding accessibility options, i am one of those that the shader effects does bother my eyes
too complicated for my taste though, i needed a little nudge to get going and couldnt get to that point myself.
execution of the game is impressive and the idea is really cool i just didnt "get it"
This is *fun* but a slow-burn kind of fun. It's neat to interact with the tools and to get better at figuring out how to use them quickly. But then... I thought I was in a terminal and used ctrl+W (delete previous word) and closed the tab I was in :') (I'll get back to it.)
And getting back: I got further, but it is somewhat frustrating that missing certain transmissions can soft lock you and you just need to restart the game and play from the beginning again. I was reasonably happy with finding the key
!> obscurity
and I assumed clearly I should use this with a cipher that accepts a key (vigenere) before I listen to the base... Then I used that and transmitted some code but I assume what I should have done was transmit the key in plaintext and that would have told me the next step? :/
@aurel300 you also assumed that this game would be bug free :') the step after finding obscurity is currently completely broken. The only thing I can do is warn about it, since it falls outside of the "easy fix on a last-minute bug" category allowed for fixes. To skip the bug, you'll have to use the codeword "lawless" on the outpost (not HQ), and then you've essentially finished the game due to another bug with HQ. Judging from your comment, you solved the final puzzle and would've received lawless to finish the task, so congrats :D but my apologies for the annoying bugs ruining the fun
The atmosphere is very nice, well done. However, I did not know what I had to do… I typed a few commands, saw some effects but did not understand them. I think rather than a long text teaching everything, a few step-by-step interactive tutorials would help a lot!
Hahah, what a nerdy entrance. Very on point to give this to some programmers to play. I liked the learning phase, going through the help system and imagining what I would use for what. I didn't need to use the itch tutorial at all, until one point - when I looked at the circles and thought I have to calculate the exact position of the intersection from the numbers. I thought that can't be right, and the itch tutorial told me bluntly that I should eyeball it (I haven't switched on any DRA yet, so I didn't know their linesights are drawn). I then swiftly managed to do next tasks until I hit the "bug wall" I guess. Exactly the same one as Aurel300 did, I think: the 1650kHz base seems dead. I was smart enough to check out the comments for bugs ^^ Anyway, even though it's a little bit underdone level-wise in comparison to the time needed to learn, the game goes hard and I had my share of fun from it.
PS: the date localizes xD
frib.png
This was so good, I think my favourite entry I've played this jam! Very steep learning curve but the detailed text instructions below helped a tonne. Ofc a more in-depth tutorial in the game itself would've been great, but this is a jam after all... if you wanted to go that route, I've found that interactive tutorials where you force the player to show they understand the base mechanics before progressing work a lot better than lots of text.
The mood in the game is really great, I love the attention to detail in the weird hovel you're playing from, and the monitor effects really add to the immersion. The audio reminded me a lot of Papers Please in a good way. I managed to beat the game, and it was very satisfying becoming more comfortable with the console commands over time.
One small hitch I hit very early on was that I selected a device before using "help control" for the first time, and the "help control" with a device selected doesn't mention the "on" command you're told about if you enter that with no selection. It took me quite a while to figure out what I was doing wrong before I realised how to turn everything on! Very glad I stuck with it though :)