I was blown away by the simplicity of Alone Among the Stars by Takuma Okada. I had encountered and played journaling projects before, but there is something both trusting and brazen about the simplicity of AAtS. So much of the experience is handed straight to the player to imagine new things, to stitch together ideas and images and visions. That’s a lot of trust.

The Archaeologist is a first shot at this genre on my/our part. To encourage being alone and recording the results of an act of self-imagination, one that is hopefully fulfilling or inspiring. Forget was already a more recent practice run in writing a solo game, but what has the best value in creating a journaling experience?

The two thoughts were simultaneous. The first is the act of placing non-written elements with written elements. Vocal, drawn, gathered, accidental- I’d like to imagine the experience of chronicling like an agent in the field. The other is the referenced story  by David Macaulay, The Motel of Mysteries, which has a specific commentary on toilet lids that has stuck with me since I read excerpts of it as a child. The severe misunderstanding of current objects that must occur at times as we examine the past.

This left an obvious combination of elements: Journaling as a field agent, and misunderstanding modern objects. This felt like the expansion or building of genre, as both are understandable reference points, and they fit together. The process immediately calls to mind future exploration using one or both aspects. The aspect of in-the-moment journaling like with AAtS (but perhaps on a voyage, or in a tomb, or in a therapy session), and the other aspect of misunderstanding and interpretation (which exists in our past work on Rosetta: The Lost Language, as well as games concerning mistaken language, stories in paintings, and discerning the meaning of a strange object or artifact). But to combine the two aspects is to make a new slice of design space, one that feels only partially explored in this way. It leaves me to wonder what will be the next attempt in this area that come to mind: Interpreting the stories of a lost person based on wall paintings or hieroglyphics, or the collective archaeology of a community or space using randomly generated evidence.

Let me know what you are curious to see next.