Another Night at the Archive

This was super fun and I got really into it! I love how the progression of gameplay allows you to get the shape of the mystery while still leaving a few details unsolved. In case it's relevant, I played the downloaded version of the game.

Things I really liked:
The most important part of the game, scanning through the archives, is the most fun! The archive entries are very well written to capture all the wildly different tones of the entries (I especially liked the various news articles that complained about tourists just walking off when it's obvious to the reader that something really bad happened to them)

I also feel like the archive request paper (where you have to fill in the answers) also sets up the horror really well before you even read anything. The question 'In what chronological order did the Schutter family cross the wildlife cameras?' made me on edge about their mysterious disappearance in the woods before I even knew who they were!

I had way more fun than I ever thought I would taking wild conspiracy theory notes about everything I thought was going on in Swantal, and there were just enough limited details on the main people involved to get me to emotionally connect with them.

The music was incredibly ominous and really added to the unsettling atmosphere of the game!

Things I think could be improved:
Sometimes when selecting an archive folder there would be a bit of a delay and I'd end up on the folder next to the one I wanted (same with the files within the folders), which disrupted the flow slightly. 

I'd like an option to alter the music level.

I'd like to be able to zoom in as far as possible on the desk to read the recovered archive entries.

It'd be great to have some accessibility options in the game (especially for blind players as the game is currently very reliant on sight, screen reading compatibility and audio descriptions etc would make the game available to a lot of potential fans!)

Things I think would be neat:
It'd be cool to have a note taking function within the game for convenience, though I had a lot of fun making my own notes anyway!

It'd be cool if the music changed with each mystery.

In conclusion, I had a lot of fun and got really invested in solving the mystery, and I'm very excited to see any future mysteries! Even if this were the only one, I'd still recommend this game to people as I had such a great experience!

how do you put the things on the board im so lost 😭

Really, really fun. :)

Lo necesito en español!

LOVED THIS!! aaaaa i love research games so excited to see the full version of this too !!

 I loved it so much, and I really need more! 10/10

I love to take notes, it is so much fun! Finding out the cameras was the most difficult part, but tbh I just needed to read the documents more carefully. 

I really hope to play the long version of the game with different stories or requests to do. 

it took me a while but i finally finished it, i'd say the cameras were probably the hardest part and i must admit i sorta just guessed those untill i got it right. other then that this game was fun and awsome, 9/of 10 (:

best of luck on any future projects, may i ask if you plan to ever re-visit this setting/system?

this game is amazing! but I just wish that the instructions on how to play were more clear and emphasized since I didnt know you could search up any of the files so I played the whole game looking at every individual file and answered the request terribly 😓

I see that you are making a full game, but if you would ever consider adding just the smallest amount of UI to this, I would love a way to completely delete everything I've written on the message without having to  go and do it manually while desperately trying (and failing) not to look at the half completed answers I've filled out previously. 

Love the game but replayability suffers because of this.

Absolutely love this game! Love searching and piecing together the spooky evidence.

I did a LOT of notetaking. I'd love to see a note taking facility in the game.

This one took me MONTHS to finally get through, since the music keeps me so on-edge and the file system took more frantic, random sifting from me than intentional name searches (my current scroll wheel is broken, so it took more effort to look through all the documents than necessary). I finally got into the flow of it and managed to finish it  in less than 3 hours.

Unfortunately, every reasonable camera combination I tried was either "several" or "few" errors. Even after looking up a successful YouTube playthrough where ONE of the combinations I used was correct -- it still says a "few" errors! I'm not sure if it's the difference between browser and download versions.

Fantastic game! I loved figuring out this mystery. (although I still wonder what exactly happened!)  I ended up making a spreadsheet to organize all my findings and the camera timelines. Would love to see more of this game and I'm excited to see this expanded on.

Shout out to KorbohneD, please answer! 

Does there exist anywhere an uncensored version of "that one heavily censored document" and if so, how could one possibly get there hands on it?

For anyone who thinks they might have missed something, there is a total of eight WORKING location codes. 

The unrelated codes (which I did not count) do not work and, in fact, change every time you close the drawer.

This is only for the codes, there is other information in the cataloge that leads somewhere useful. 

For an extremely basic example:

Ernst Kreutz                                                                                                                                Did you mean: 'Kreutz, Ernst'?                                                                                            People are catologed by surnames not first names!

Hi ! The game is really cool, i figured out most of the info (the camera was the one i did NOT find) but i still loved having to search and discovering the story :)

i did it :)

very fun, decently long too

interesting lore as ell, very excited to see where this goes next.

I remember playing this game about a year ago and it was great! However, it was not finished. Is it now?

i played the game in one sitting, had a great time 9.5/10!

i think the camara identification should get a retry, because i somehow managed to "guess" it (calculated guess, elimination) but never 100% sure.

in the end, it drove me crazy, because i thought i got the camaras wrong, or something else wrong; when actually the only thing i was sure i was right about, the street name,  was a mistype, i dropped an "n", lmao.

also  a suggestion: this game feels like a great escape room (i felt like i was actually a detective/researcher, would play other stories like that) - i can see myself playing this with friends on two screens, one for the index archive, and one with the table/item archive, maybe there's a way to implement/integrate this into the game.

also, i would love for it to be an option to download a file for print and play physically.

bug: the game reacts too slow to typed input - writing the code into the archive machine, if i typed too fast, it wrote the second key twice (i.e. typed 13 fast, the machine wrote 33). i guess that's the reason i dropped an "n".

I liked this game! Simple in style and gameplay but challenging and engaging. Havent completed it 100% yet, still figuring out the cams. Though if I had to share any critique it would definitely be q.o.l improvements. The lack of tutorial/introduction makes it a bit hard to get into playing the game the first few minutes. Also be nice to have an "archive" to hold files that you arent actively using so you dont have to go back and forth to the catalogue.  Besides that, its not bad, I enjoyed finding scattered information, very rewarding to put the pieces together :) 

Loved the reference to Dave the Diver in the Di file. This game could be packed full of references that I'll likely never find, and I love that.

OMG! I really enjoyed this game even when english is not my native language, but I understood the story behind the complex situation. I really wanna play more to discover all the other details for the rest of the story. Thanksssss 

Can't play without a mouse as this game requires the zoom in function to read the newspaper clippings, seemed promising but I'm sadly unable to play.

Review of Another Night at the Archives:

Gameplay [3/5] Gameplay is minimalistic but effective. The way in which information is discovered and dispersed is equal measures challenging and rewarding; the biggest issue I had was how surface-level the connections were. You did not need much deductive reasoning to complete the vast majority of the puzzles, and the one you DO need is extremely difficult and frustrating.

Performance [4/5] The game runs great! No obvious issues. I do feel as though the file cabinet could be a little more economic with its space. If two drawers share a beginning letter and contain no files, they should probably be merged to make things more evenly distributed. Controls to quickly flip through the files would also be a huge improvement.

Writing [5/5] Documents presented feel real and grounded in the setting. It can be hard for 'found footage' or 'unfiction' type works to capture the tone of the medium they're using--newspapers, police reports, etc--but this game nails it. 

Aesthetic [3/5] The actual environment is very simplistic and does not lend itself well to setting an atmosphere. However the quality of the evidence's composition makes up for it. Everything BESIDES the archive *looks* like it's supposed to, and that's great.

Entertainment [4/5] I was super invested for most of my time playing, but I did experience some diminishing returns towards the end. The game never fully lost me though and I still thoroughly enjoyed my time with it.

Score: 3.8 [B]

The game is really fun! I wish there was a way to turn of screen jitter (or whatever it is called when the screen moves when I move my mouse) I found it really distracting and made it difficult to play, to be honest

This. was. AMAZING! My friends and I all got out notepads and sat down going over everything. Truly phenomenal work, I can't wait for the full release! <3

Also took me back to when I read about the flooding in HS.

I love this type of game I loved this great effort with all the art and the maps and the all of it so well done

Absolutelly loved this game! I went trough everything and investigated myself what happened and it's a crazy story (crazy in a good way)

spoiler ahead below!!

I still can't believe that the only guy who found out about everything G.a.c.a was doing died while trying to save the town. RIP Ernst

Great game with a very huge potential! Could not help myself but read every entry in the archive.
PS. RIP to the guy who tried to save the town 

This was so much fun. My coworker and I got so distracted trying to put the story together we kept forgetting we are only the archivists. She is an actual archivist so it made it even more fun.  I really want to know the whole story though!