The Message from Deep Space released last week and is stirring up some buzz in the puzzle scene: a game about making first contact with extraterrestrials and learning how to communicate with them through the unconventional channels of math and programming. The creators site the lofty goal of "taking a realistic approach to deciphering an interstellar message."
The gameplay consists primarily of sitting at a set of computer monitors at a desk, doing your job as this mission's translator, interpreting and responding to radio wave signals coming from out in the cosmos. It seems that at first you have no clue how to make any sense of the random numbers you're picking up.
But as soon as a back-and-forth can be established, as soon as the incoming message changes in response to something you've sent out, the most basic level of communication is occurring... from there it looks like the game progresses into more and more complex information going back and forth, logic and math and linguistic and even perhaps some visual programming routines being sent and received across the void.
The concept of building up a common language between two parties that don't understand each other, starting from very basic principles and building out a vocabulary one small understanding at a time, is a fascinating idea that's slowly crept into more thinky games over time. We've had our share of "cryptic language" games, but this is perhaps the closest I've seen so far to the stuff of sci-fi novels. It specifically recalls to mind some classics that operate in this realm, books like Children of Time that are concerned with the growth and evolution of species and worlds and what it might really be like to establish contact between completely different civilizations.
Does the gameplay of The Message from Deep Space hold up to its grand concept and influences? There's only one way to find out, but I know many in the community have been reporting back that it's worth checking out. The game is available on Steam now with a 10% launch discount running for another week or so.
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