vokietislt 2026-10-19 19:15 ♥ 0
Well it's very beautiful and sound is great, bit hard to play it though. I was not very good at deciphering what is drawn in the pictures
Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD60 → Notes on Ancient Tech
By kristinamay
| Percentile | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | LD60 | Ever | |
| Overall | 33 | |||||
| Fun | 33 | |||||
| Innovation | 33 | |||||
| Theme | 33 | |||||
| Graphics | 33 | |||||
| Audio | 1 | |||||
| Humor | 32 | |||||
| Mood | 31 | |||||
Well it's very beautiful and sound is great, bit hard to play it though. I was not very good at deciphering what is drawn in the pictures
@vokietislt thanks for playing and thanks for the feedback! Did you have issues with the controls or just a tough time figure out the pictures? They're meant to be a bit ambiguously related to the blueprints but there should still be some touchpoints you can use to get started. LMK if you are interested and want any hints!
Such cute Martians. My favorite is the blue one.
@kristinamay few freebies would be nice to get going, that would indicate where to look, and maybe less choices? it's quite an enormous list, but i guess it's fine for what it is, just not easy.
@vokietislt I recommend finding an object on the corkboard and then looking through the blueprints until you find one that matches, rather than the other way around. There are a few distinct shapes that should get you off to a good start - Rho and Lambda are probably good starting points!
Cute! Loved the art, was fun for the first half, but getting to some of the tougher ones/less obvious ones made it a bit frustrating. Really wish the list would remove options that you had gotten earlier to make it a bit easier later. Overall really fun!
One of my favorites I've played so far! I love deduction games. Here's my favorite little guy: Screenshot_20261019_203133.png
@shimmerscale thanks! I like those ones too. :-) @yubs i hear that! I even made it easier after some play testing. I didnβt remove the categories because some are repeated (when items have similar usages). But looking back itβd probably make sense to keep them 1:1, thanks for the feedback!
Screenshot 2026-10-20 155109.png
Wonderful game! I love this genre, and exploring an alien culture through it felt really fresh. Though on my first playthrough, I saved the three hardest items for last, so I had to start over to figure out what they were for by comparing them with the two more obvious ones.
@turbolaser Thank you! I wonder - which three items were the hardest? My playtester had his hardest ones but I made some adjustments to make them a bit more straightforward.
@kristinamay Chi was the hardest for me, followed by Omega and Pi. For some reason, I got the impression that they lived outdoors, which threw me off.
@turbolaser heh, I definitely get why thinking they lived outdoors would make one of those extra difficult. My playtester had trouble with Omega also, I meant to add it in more images to make it a bit more clear but, well, I forgot. Game jam and all. Thanks again for playing!
Wow, a deduction game, my favorite genre! I loved this game, had a lot of fun with it. The graves were probably the hardest for me to deduce, I've mostly got them by the process of elimination as they were my last object. I don't think I've had a lot of problems with any of the others. Anyway, I loved the little guys and their weird little things. Great job!
I was like "what am i.. OH I GET IT!" fun game :)
Really cute game! I'm not the best at this type of games, but maybe once you find out what an object is have that definition crossed off from the list? I didn't manage to get all of them so if some are using the same definition then it's fine! Really cosy overall, the art is adorable!
@pigeonic yeah, a couple of them are using the same answers - if I were able to make changes right now, I would probably change that to make it a bit easier. It's tough, when you make puzzle games you're always like "oh no I made it too easy" and then it's still too hard somehow π thanks for playing!
Phew, I made it!
This was very good! I had a lot of fun making connections in the beginning, and then started getting overwhelmed as I got towards the last few few objects in the list. First of all, I loved the art. The Beings were ridiculously whimsical and charming, and their creations had an almost Seussical quality to them. Great design work!
Second, I had a lot of fun with the progression of the item identification. First, there were constant dopamine hits as I quickly identified the easy items, and I enjoyed the later items which felt almost like solving a page out of Where's Waldo. When I finally spotted the the "don'tsinkie" (what I named the float), it was both such a relief, and also made me feel quite proud of my observational skills!
I did unfortunately run into a pretty rough issue in the last round of objects; I had Omega, Chi, and Kappa left at the end, and I was completely stumped by them. I found them on the board, but I didn't have enough context to identify their actual purpose. This was compounded by the fact that a lot of purposes ended up accidentally pairing with one another depending on context/interpretation (float and rest, entertainment and sport, improve appearance/improve health/correct behavior, house inhabitants/mark a grave), and I was never sure which of the three I had wrong. I ended up brute forcing them with every possible interpretation I could think of, which wasn't a very satisfying conclusion.
That doesn't take away from the fact that, up until that point, I really liked the game! That friction that could potentially be alleviated by removing uses from the dropdown list once there are no more objects to identify with them, but I'm not sure if that would swing too far in the opposite direction and make the last few items too *easy* to identify.
Finally, it was such a nice little touch to let folks come up with names for the various artifacts. :) My only piece of feedback there is that I wish there was a final screen showing all of the names that I gave to the objects, because I absolutely wanted to see screenshots of everyone else's names, and to show off my "great" names here.
Overall, well done, and thank you for sharing this game! I had a great time
One last question: What WAS the ridiculous thing that Dr. Fig said?
(Also my favorite being was this one, for their lackadaisical attitude)
@koolruz thank you so much for playing my game!! Totally agree about the endgame, but wasn't sure how to balance it without making the endgame too easy. I REALLY wanted to add in an ending page with all the names there, but didn't have time, so instead just made it so you can return and look at them yourself. Unsatisfying, I know! Game jams! Also didn't consider the possible synonyms cropping up there with entertainment/sport etc. I really appreciate the time and effort you took to make your review. I suppose in order to find out the ridiculous thing Dr Fig said, you'll have to wait for the sequel (that is also when I will find out).
I was surprised to spend as long as I did on it, but I really liked playing this. I do feel like some objects don't get enough context to help identify them, but having the list of options does help to consider what they could be. The difference between the blueprint sketch and the media sometimes makes it tricky to figure out what something is, but I guess that's the challenge.
I like him Screenshot 2026-10-20 212810.png
yess @boxofcuriosity that's also my favorite lil guy! he's so good at eating cubes. (thanks for playing!!)
This is really cute! I like how it integrates the worldbuilding directly into the gameplay concept. I managed to beat it, which means that the difficulty was reasonably fair. There was one thing that tripped me up a bit:
!> "entertain inhabitants" for the little triangular blocks threw me off, because the blocks are clearly too small to inhabit, so I'm not sure what "inhabitants" is doing here. It sort of makes sense for the VR goggles, but even then, just "entertainment" would have been clearer, I think.
I really enjoyed it overall! A very polished & positive experience.
z.png I really love the art style of this game! It made me remind of some picture books I read as a kid. Searching for blueprint objects on the board feels like looking through my favorite comic books with a magnifying galss. The little Martian is so cute...but this poor guy looks like he's about to die. Someone save him!
@3lstmsinatrenchcoat fair point, I was just kind of using "inhabitants" as a catchall for "people" in that situation but looking back, it doesn't make much sense and I should have just used "entertain".
@bay-l don't worry he's just gone for a lil swim!!!
thank you both for playing!
The concept of uncovering an ancient civilization through its fragmented documents is really compelling. It makes the act of deduction feel genuinely rewarding, like a real moment of archaeological discovery.
Very novel and fun concept for a game! You did a great job at depicting the objects in a way that lets you get creative thinking about them. I managed to figure most out, but failed on these three:
Bildschirmfoto 2026-10-21 um 10.15.50.png
Controls to navigate the pages of the notebook could be a bit improved (like a prev page button) but overall very cool game. Loved the art style!
@oadt thanks for playing! There is a previous page button, can you please confirm that you weren't able to see it? If not, that's a bug, maybe a display issue, I'd like to look into it.
Otherwise, from left to right, some hints:
1. Think about where else you've seen purplish teardrop shaped things on the board (albeit bigger).
2. That one is a little on me because I meant to draw water flowing out of it and just didn't end up remembering to do that
3. This is in several places on the board, including in the backdrop of the apartment you're looking at, as well as in the dark blue nighttime scene.
@kristinamay Sorry, I am just blind... Now I see the previous page button π
Ah, now I got it, thanks! The third item was the one that I got totally wrong
the idea of studying a dead civilisation's tech through ads and blueprints is such a smart inversion of the theme, and the hand drawn art makes the whole archive feel like a real museum find. the cute little aliens are a lovely contrast to all that archaeology too. was it hard to keep the blueprints ambiguous enough to puzzle over but clear enough to solve? really lovely project.
Fun & cute little deduction game!
Cute little game. Loved the bright, colourful artstyle. Good work -- well done!
A nice deduction puzzle. I respect the amount of thought put into designs of alien contraptions so that they feel alien, but still comprehensible enough to make sense to be able to deduce what they do from a small-ish hints. And it feels very rewarding when you solve it!
Gameplay wise, I was at first surprised that the game didn't remove the locked-in purposes of blueprints, but a little counting exercise made it make sense very soon. And, remembering how the late game of Obra Dinn was, I like that the options stayed unlocked (especially when you consider that there is not *that* many of them). It pushed me to continue deducing combinations, instead of just "Oh, these are the only three options left, I guess I'll sHuFfLe tHeM aRoUnD uNtIl ThE gAmE pRoGrEsSeS" π It is also neat that you don't need to develop the options being removed as it is the default behavior π
!> That being said, I couldn't deduce Omegas until the very end. I guess the combination of an "Omega" as the last letter of the alphabet and a "Grave marker" makes sense. I also, for some reason, couldn't understand what an Upsilon is, as it felt that they appear almost everywhere, and the realization that they're just some building blocks was a bit funny xD
My favorite Being was this one. They are the storm that is approaching. The primordial gremlin.
(I hope they don't get hit by the falling branch)
Absolutely lovely entry! The hand-drawn notebook, sticky notes and colorful alien sketches pinned on the cork board give it so much personality, and the pan and zoom feel smooth. You should feel very proud!
Lovely game, the deciphering was fun!
Well done.
This felt like one of the most original and complete concepts in this jam! I found it difficult to figure out a couple of the objects at the end there but enjoyed the experience overall.
I really like the visuals and the idea of piecing together a story with scattered context and a bit of imagination.
The core gameplay is quite well made, it's very fun to look for connections and it feels like discovering new things! Though, I think the corkboard, the main play area, felt very static, maybe the player can move the posters around or just a small jiggle animation + sound when hovering over could make it feel a bit more alive.
I like the detail that you put blueprint information into a notepad, I think it could be more visually consistent if the next page buttons were sticky notes (the menu seems to follow that idea), also, perhaps a notepad icon instead of abstract '<>' button would make sense. I think it would make it feel more like a complete package but amazing work either way!
I liked this funny guy at the end screen.
I gave up after an hour but I did get all the way to a final set of three things to identify.
Really nice drawings and I liked the puzzle of having to rotate some of them in my mind to identify them.
It would have been nice if there was music in the background all the way through, I think.
But more importantly, if I could have filtered solved and also seen how many times I had correctly marked down the usages it would have been nice.
Over all though a really great game.
Play-through with more feedback: https://youtu.be/-pnStrN-aoc
