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

Published 3 days ago
StatusPrototype
PlatformsWindows, HTML5
Rating
Rated 5.0 out of 5 stars
(1 total ratings)
AuthorKorbohneD
GenrePuzzle, Adventure
Made withGameMaker
TagsAtmospheric, complex-story, Creepy, Detective, Mystery, Noir, note-taking, obra-dinn, Point & Click

Download

Download
Another Night at the Archive _windows.zip 38 MB
Download
Another Night at the Archive.exe 52 MB

Comments

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I had a good time with the game overall (I like mysteries and puzzles), but a few minor things:

  • The Windows installer wanted to call the game "Made by KorobohneD" instead of "A Night at the Archive", and the executable is also called by that incorrect name. The filename is correct.
  • The Back buttons are not consistently located, so it's sometimes troublesome to find them; I think it might be better if they are just always visible. And when zoomed in on the table, it can get in the way while not being interactable.
  • There's no way to close the game once finished, you have to force close the executable.

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! :-)