Another Night at the Archive
You are the new hire for the night shift at the dingy old archive in your city. But it turns out that there is information stored here that you can find nowhere else. So every couple of nights, you get a call by some weirdo government agent or private ghost hunter to find some very specific information for some very specific and weird questions they have.
Using the old card catalog, you look up names, cities, buildings and events to slowly piece together mysterious and horrifying tales of weirdness by looking at various newspaper clippings, old flyers, book pages, webpage print-outs and more, all stored in this archive, while the wind outside is howling and the old lightbulbs flicker.
ALTHOUGH YOU CAN PLAY IT ONLINE, I STILL RECOMMEND STRONGLY THAT YOU DOWNLOAD THE GAME.
SOME UNFIXABLE BUGS ONLY OCCUR IN THE BROWSER VERSION.
Heavily inspired by games such as “Return of the Obra-Dinn” or “The Roottrees are Dead”.
Jumpscares: No. Only a somewhat creepy atmosphere
Language: English
Duration: 60 min
Controls: Mouse & Keyboard
This is just an early prototype to test the game concept. If you want to be involved in the development process, exchange theories with other fans or actively participate in the game's design, visit the official Discord:
https://discord.gg/r9kC68u
Download
Development log
- Full Game in the making!9 days ago
Comments
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This was so good! Loved it. After solving the game, I went through the whole archive just to see if there was anything I had missed (there wasn't). I think I was hoping for a more definitive confirmation of what was going on. I'm not sure if that would make the game better, but just to say that the story was so intriguing I was hoping for more! I also really enjoyed seeing the red herrings in the archive.
You are in luck then! In the full game the whole archive will be filled with references and different red herrings leading to each other.
Also, I will do my best to make the other missions and stories a bit clearer in what is exactly going on! Thanks for the feedback!
How the heck do you figure out the cameras? I feel like there's almost not enough data to figure that out.
You can use the visual features and things you notice in the occurrences to determine which cameras are not the ones you need and then figure out the ones you need by progress of elimination. Once you know what cameras are definitely not showing what you need, the rest becomes easier. If you are still stuck, there might be a another hint somewhere on a newspaper clipping. Also remember that to go to a point on the map you would have needed to go there, meaning you might pass cameras that don't explicitely have a designation or description of you.
an excellent mystery! you've nailed it :)
Absolutely wonderful game, had a fun time trying to put together the mystery of it all. The gameplay mechanics is quite interesting, loved looking through and trying to piece together with limited information. Would love to check out and happily await for any new updates/other games.
What an absolute gem of a game, well done! Got stuck with the camera's at the end and almost gave up, but pushed through and was totally worth it
I had a good time with the game overall (I like mysteries and puzzles), but a few minor things:
Thanks for the comment! I will definitely try to fix that, as soon as I have the time! Glad you still liked it! : )
Small note: the radio transcript has "Kruger Industries" at the top. (If I had to guess, I'd suspect that was its name until you didn't want it on the same card as Kreutz?)
Anyway, that aside, this is very well done. It was a lot of fun to piece things together (sometimes literally!), and I loved the chains of inferences necessary to answer the questions. (I did somehow get the first two cameras swapped, so my inferences weren't perfect. There's also a weird little inconsistency there about whether they were carrying a picnic basket or lunch boxes?)
Excited to see how it ends up if you keep working on it!
Wow, your absolutely correct! Another puzzle solved. : D
I really had it as a different name before, because I realized way to late it would show up the moment the player would input the first name, good job!
I am also not a native speaker, so sometimes there can be difficulty with getting the meaning of words across. With lunch boxes I meant those little plastic boxes you put cut up stuff like cucumbers and tomatoes in which you then put into the picknic basket. If that makes sense?
Probably need to reword that then. : )
Thanks for your feedback! Means a lot to me!
Oh, right, language barrier! It's funny, because when I put "lunch box" into an image search I get exactly the thing you describe. And maybe that's what younger people in the US picture? For those of us raised in the 70s-80s in the US, a lunch box is a rectangular metal (or sometimes plastic) box with a handle, for carrying lunch. (Do an image search for "1980s lunch box" to get a sense of it.) It's not a thing you'd put into a picnic basket...but the thing you describe totally is.
Well, and now we both know! :-)