The Message from Deep Space

beep boop aliens. Very fascinating. Cool visuals, incredible researched science, and filled to the brim with 'Ah-ha' moments.

It feels like this game was specifically made to appeal to me. The easy pitch on it is what if learning to communicate with an alien language, like what is shown in Project Hail Mary, was a fully realized game? I didn't know that much about this going in and expected it to be a little experimental game, but I think I was up well over 30 hours by the time I rolled credits (I don't think Steam has tracked my time correctly here since I played quite a bit offline on vacation). I had dealt with all sorts of different basic math and science, many different aspects of "humanity" and morality, and had become emotionally invested in the history and fate of this alien species. It continually amazed me how the communication gradually progressed in how I was able to read the "language". There's no cheating or corner cutting, you are just logically guided through how their language works piece by piece over time. There are parts early on, especially dealing with math, where I needed to scratch out notes into my notepad to complete a transmission, but soon after the transmissions became more intuitively readable and the notepad was abandoned. I can't recall another game where I have done that. On top of all this the game presents you as working with a team of scientists week to week who are all have different expertises and perspectives on the transmissions and what they mean for the future of the human race. There's a nice inspiring and hopeful story told there that breaks up some of the monotony of the translation work. And it also conveniently serves as a solid hint system (though a bit uneven in which transmissions it chooses to hint for you and not, and to what level those hints are just spelling out the answer). I don't think this game is for everyone, it can feel like homework or be tedious to some, but there is such a unique and satisfying experience here for those, like me, who love this sort of thing.

Probably one of the best puzzle games ever made, not even joking, looks may deceive you. It is so satisfying and when you get stucked, the game mechanics help you in clever ways.

I really enjoyed this game, a really fun puzzle/translation game. For the first 1/3rd to 1/2 it was up there as a serious all-timer. I was telling everyone at work about it... But I feel the game falls off a bit in the last half. It becomes harder and harder to determine exactly what you are supposed to say. This is compounded by the fact you often don't know you're going down a wrong path until things don't make sense. This is made worse by your co-workers not helping as much anymore. For the first half or so almost every puzzle if you make enough mistakes or take enough time your co-workers will give you a clue which is normally enough. But they are basically silent the last half of the game. This is extra worse because mistranslations compound, so if you're like 10% wrong with a word and then you use that word to define another word it will be like 20% wrong. This is exasperated by you coworkers not helping you define words either. For the first half they will define all the words of the week so you can look at what they said and figure out what the word is supposed to be. But towards the end they stop doing that. So you can go several weeks in a row not knowing what certain words mean. It basically got to the point where I had a guide open and if I couldn't get it in a couple of minutes I would just look up the answer. Which is a real same for such a brilliant puzzle/logic game. Really all it needed was more IDEAs and more definitions from your co-workers. Still an amazing game, totally recommend it.

Yeah bro, this game rules.

I laughed, I cried, I frequently looked up the answer for the specific message because I absolutely could not figure out the specific answer that was looked for. Would recommend regardless.