Another Night at the Archive

help! i tried to play, and after getting a few peices of info, the game would not let me get specific info cards. i tried getting the one under "Ad" but the numbers kept changing and the system would not let me put it in. am i doing something wrong, i speculated that it was because there was too many things on my desk, but i dunno. also, how in the world do you find out where the hobos friend lives. because no matter how much i look, i cant seem to find it, thank you.

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.

Im confused how to even start. I looked up all 3 key words in the initial letter. What next? nothing unlocked and I have no new leads

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!

Great concept, but I wish the check button had told you wich section of info was incorrect. I spent a while assuming I had gotten the trail cams wrong only to end up brute forcing the "fewer" and "several" aspects of the checker to find out it was a typo in another section. 

I like how the game doesnt spell out for you what happened and that isnt what you are figuring out it just leaves it up to the player's interpretation. 

Looking forward to a full game! 

I spent HOURS exploring this game. Most enjoyable thing I think I've played in a while. It was difficult for my pea brain to figure out but I had SO much fun piecing things together regardless. I think I wrote 3 and a half pages of notes lol

I really enjoyed this game, I've been craving something like it without really knowing how to describe it. This game was atmospheric and unsettling without leaning on jumpscares or even animations "out of the corner of your eye". I thoroughly enjoyed clicking through and taking notes on physical paper, trying to sort out my thoughts and flesh out the timeline from the information as I gathered it. I genuinely enjoyed this game and will likely even revisit after a long while to replay once my silly little brain forgets some stuff (as it does).

I reallyyyyy loved this game. Seriouly one of my favorites so far :)))))))

I wish it had some explanations tho. I have so many questions xd but i understand its not a full game yet. Totally add some lore

For anyone confused: the numbers on the cards aren't dates.

I MASSIVELY enjoyed this game! Ever since I played "the Roottrees are Dead" I have been looking for similar games. I have one question... is Richard Kenner the creature? or in charge of hiding the creature from the public? Because he put a lot of work into normalizing disappearances. Also what's up with the mayor being the one to ignore the damage to the dam? also is the redtop dam and the swantal dam the same dam? so I guess more than one question

I'm having trouble on the cameras. I only have 6 camera transcripts and I'm pretty sure the Schutter family is in 2 of them, both having unidentified location.

I very much enjoyed the concept and the story, though the estimated playtime in the description is optimistic at best. It will take more than 60 minutes to get to the bottom of everything. I understand this is a prototype, but I don´t find much to critique except for the music. It gets really repetitive really fast, and the metallic stinger noises really strain the ears and actually made my tinnitus flare up.