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!Dec 03, 2024
Comments
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Just finished playing the game, and I loved it! A super interesting premise and gameplay mechanics! I find research and organization relaxing, and this satisfies the need to find files while also following an interesting plot! I did struggle a little with the trail cam clues, but that was likely because I kept sending back the files and losing track of where I found them lol. Overall, I'm super excited for the full version to come out!
Is this also based of of The Magnus Archives? (If not, cool beans. U should listen if ur interested)
Spoilers
How do i find the button sequence and the friend of the guy?
I am an archivist and you captured the feel of trying to get answers for a patron pretty well. I wish in real life we had an automated system that could pull records from the collection and return them correctly.
Really enjoyed this! Very tight and I very much appreciate the obvious marking of archive entries as irrelevant (probably easier for you too since you didn't have to make anything). I do think that having a way to better organize the clues once you pull them out of the archive would be helpful. Maybe being able to organize documents in manilla folders on the table or something. But! Even if you don't implement something like that, super solid and will be recommending it around. :)
Please tell me you plan on porting this game to mobile
Sorry no, probably won't happen.
Loved the game, can't wait for a full one! just, i can't tell if it is my vision or screen or what, but some things are really hard to read? and idk if it was the things that were meant to be hard to read (the newspaper letters where to small for me, and I couldn't zoom in more, but maybe is just me).
Also, making notes by hand is cool, but sometimes I wanted to attach like a post-it note in some evidences with some conclusions i got from them lol, is something like that planed for the full release? or just a way to be able to tag from where each piece of evidence came from? Like, in the "roottrees are dead" the in-game notebook has the highlight function that allows us to take only what we want from a piece of evidence, but it says where it came from, so we can go back to it if needed.
I'm mostly suggesting it because the table gets cluttered real fast, and I was afraid of returning evidence, neededing it later, and not remembering from which place in the archive I tooh it in the first place (I could always write down what evidence came from where, but I was already cramping my notebok pages to keep all related info together - i endede up filling three pages lol - and if I stopped to fill out a reference sheet i'd get lost in my own notes). Also because once I had to pull from all the codes I had multiple times looking for a specific evidence bc I couldn't remember where it was (one of the camera logs) , that I had accidently returned while, ironicaly, looking for another evidence that was buried underneath the others lol
Hi!
Thanks so much for playing and giving me your feedback! I have a couple of questions for you if you don't mind.
What display resolution are you using? Did you zoom in with mouse wheel until it wouldn't anymore? Was the text unreadable, because it was too small, because it was blurry or any other reason? Normally, things should not be hard to read, sorry if that was bothersome to you!
Post-It Notes will actually be a thing in the full version! You can pin them onto any clue or piece of evidence you find and if you take it out from the archive again, it will still be there.
There will also be a record of successfull machine numbers you found along with probably some keywords to their content, so you can find them again quickly if needed.
Hi! just played the game and it was fantastic!! not OP, but I just wanted to add that I also had a hard time reading some documents, even when fully scrolled in and had to basically have my face up to the screen for a few things. resolution didn't seem like the issue, text was just a bit small!
> enters game
> sends the form back without filling it out
well gg everyone
Very interesting and fun! It was a bit difficult without a tutorial or something similar though. I got most of the answers but ended up trying different numbers for the camera questions until it worked. Still confused about the camera logs
with the environment description (when available), and some cues from the logs themselves, you can sus out where the camera is placed with the help of the map
I can't wait for the full game :)
Loved it! Although it took me embarrassingly long to realize I have to click on the table, so I went through the whole archive first....
Please make more! The world needs more of these.
Anyone willing to double check my work? I feel like I have everything correct but the checker thing says I have a few errors and I don't know what they could be. Do not read past this point if you haven't finished the game yet!
1. 22 03 17 6 2003
2. 3 7 5 9 9 3 4
3. 7 6 5
4. Lutzen Grauenstreet 34
Check the cameras. Where is the thing headed you think?
thanks for the nudge!
im completley stuck on where to even find the button order, and the hour and min of the incedent.
to find the time of the in ident you need to find out where the festival was then find it in the archive
An amazing puzzle game. I loved the atmosphere, the world building, and seeing all the ways little details connected allowing you to form the larger, and creepier story, in your mind. Would love to see a more polished version as some elements were a bit rough (a better tutorial, hint system, and less clunky manipulation of clues would be amazing). I see you're working on an updated version and can't wait!
Hey, thanks for the feedback! What exactly did you find clunky about the manipulation of clues?
Cheers!
It's been a while but from memory moving around so many clues on the board got a bit confusing. At times I felt like I had 15+ documents overlapping with each other and all of various sizes, and trying to find the right document to cross reference with some new clues that came in felt clunky. And discarding the documents to clear space on the board was something I was worried about doing as I could never tell if I would need that document again so the whole space just became cluttered.
Really good game so far, I'm excited for the full version! I love creepy conspiracy atmosphere.
Full game will benefit from a bit more of a tutorial on how to use everything (took me a little bit of struggle to figure it out). But this was such a good experience! Loved unraveling the mystery and getting deeper and deeper into the "conspiracy."
i can't figure out the last prompt, the one about ernst' best friend?? i found his first name from one of the newspaper clippings but past that i'm stuck :(
You can get his full name from a forum post...
i dont get how the machine work what do i need to put to get the Swantal folder
Have you searched for the word "swantal" in the index card system?
There should be a number Combination next to the entry.
great game, reminded me of "a Hand with many fingers" but with its own twist on the concept. really liked it!
i don't know how to start the game i tried putting in the numbers from the cards into the machine thing and it said "archive receptacle damage detected" and i literally don't know how to get past it can someone help :( i don't get it
Did you just input random numbers you found on the cards? Because that won't work then. You need to first click on the printout, check what your task is and then research certain words like "Swantal" for example and only input numbers into the machine, actually related to your current case.
oh my goodness gracious i feel silly
I can't figure out how to zoom in on the newspaper clippings
Use the mouse wheel. : )
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! :-)
Oh, bento boxes? Or food storage containers? If it has multiple sections to put different foods in, it's a bento box. If it doesn't, it's a food storage container. If it has a handle, it's a lunch box. Also, bento boxes are commonly called lunch boxes. Easy mistake to make tbh, a lot of native english speakers probably don't know what "bento box" means. (bento is a loanword, lol. Good ol' english.) Love the game btw! Can't wait to see the full version :D