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Sacred Reviews: Tell Them Who We Were
thesacredlobo- 03/07/2024 12:41 AM
- 38 views
Intro
"Tell Them Who We Were" is a short adventure/simulation game developed by Beaker using Sphere that was made at TOJam 2022: All Twogether Now. Unfortunately I imagine getting a lengthy review out of this project is going to be a bit of a stretch since this game is about ten minutes or so long and most of that time is devoted to simply moving on the game's one map in search of clues on where you need to go in order to bring the game to a close. And with it's short playtime you can probably already guess the story is pretty bare bones, but I suppose I should start my review there.
Story
Summary
In this game we play as an AI controlled spaceship that was created by an unspecified species in it's final moments. Our goal is to simply find other intelligent life in the galaxy and share memories of our creators with them in order to tell them their story. A task that will take centuries as we scan various star systems in hopes we'll find a planet containing intelligent alien life. Of course, if you spend enough time searching you'll eventually stumble upon robots running a signal hub.
I was pretty lucky in this run and found one of the signal hubs in year 30.
Seeing this as a good sign we decide to investigate the other hubs that are receiving signals from this star system in hopes we'll eventually come across intelligent alien life. Unfortunately all of the hubs we visit are also devoid of life, but that does leave us with the option to visit the location where all of the signals are being sent. A small planet circling the very edge of the super massive black hole at the center of the galaxy. And it's hear that our journey can finally come to a close as we find a race of blue goats that are also on the edge of extinction that would love to hear about our creators.
Gameplay
There really isn't that much to discuss here. You can either choose to move about the galaxy using the wasd keys or the arrow keys. The w/up arrow will cause the ship to accelerate in the direction it's facing. The s/down arrow will cause the ship to accelerate in the opposite direction it's facing. The a/left arrow will cause the ship to rotate left while the d/right arrow key will cause the ship to rotate right. The space bar on the other hand serves as a break key and the m key will pull up the universal map which can be used to spot where the various hub system are.
For the sake of convenience I put orange boxes around the hub worlds and our ship. For the curious the yellow dot is our ship. In-game your supposed to recognize the hub systems because their star systems will increase and decrease in size. And in order to interact with various worlds you need to left click on them while within a certain range of the star system. Though the exact range of that function isn't clear to me. Of course, even with you having a bit of wiggle room to play with in terms of how close you have to get near a star system in order to investigate it. The slippery nature of controlling the ship ensures you'll probably overshoot or undershoot your intended target a few times before you start to adapt to the game's controls. Though by the time you start to adapt you'll probably have beaten the game anyway. So you'll probably only get good at the game if you decide to play it a few times in order to get a run where your year score is super low. Though considering how luck based this game is it probably isn't worth farming for a low year score anyway.
Graphics
On the graphical side of things the game is pretty basic with most of the objects in this game being circles of varying colors and sizes. The only non-circle object in this game is the spaceship that looks a lot like a triangle.
In other words this game looks a lot like a game made back in the early days of gaming and by early days I mean the days of the Atari 2600.
Sound
On the sound side of things the game only has one song that constantly loops. Outside of that we get a few sound effects for the ship and the overwhelming roar of the ship's engines or maybe that's meant to be space. Regardless the ship probably shouldn't make any noise considering our perspective places us as a god like being peering down on everything from above. And as we all known sound doesn't travel through space anyway. Plus the background roar is so overwhelming it makes it hard to hear the game's background music at times.
Conclusion
"Tell Them Who We Were" is an alright experience I suppose and isn't that bad for a game made in three days, but there are much better short games to play that involve space on this site in my opinion such as "Planet Farm" by peridon. And while I'd probably be a lot more critical of this game normally and give it a much lower score for being so bare bones in this day and age. One really does need to factor in that this game was made over the course of three days. So it being extremely bare bones does make sense. So I'm going to cut this game a lot of slack and give it an average score. After all, the sound balance is off, the visuals are a bit too rudimentary in my opinion, and the story could have been expanded upon a little bit with us learning who created the AI spaceship.
"Tell Them Who We Were" is a short adventure/simulation game developed by Beaker using Sphere that was made at TOJam 2022: All Twogether Now. Unfortunately I imagine getting a lengthy review out of this project is going to be a bit of a stretch since this game is about ten minutes or so long and most of that time is devoted to simply moving on the game's one map in search of clues on where you need to go in order to bring the game to a close. And with it's short playtime you can probably already guess the story is pretty bare bones, but I suppose I should start my review there.
Story
Summary
In this game we play as an AI controlled spaceship that was created by an unspecified species in it's final moments. Our goal is to simply find other intelligent life in the galaxy and share memories of our creators with them in order to tell them their story. A task that will take centuries as we scan various star systems in hopes we'll find a planet containing intelligent alien life. Of course, if you spend enough time searching you'll eventually stumble upon robots running a signal hub.
I was pretty lucky in this run and found one of the signal hubs in year 30.
Seeing this as a good sign we decide to investigate the other hubs that are receiving signals from this star system in hopes we'll eventually come across intelligent alien life. Unfortunately all of the hubs we visit are also devoid of life, but that does leave us with the option to visit the location where all of the signals are being sent. A small planet circling the very edge of the super massive black hole at the center of the galaxy. And it's hear that our journey can finally come to a close as we find a race of blue goats that are also on the edge of extinction that would love to hear about our creators.
Gameplay
There really isn't that much to discuss here. You can either choose to move about the galaxy using the wasd keys or the arrow keys. The w/up arrow will cause the ship to accelerate in the direction it's facing. The s/down arrow will cause the ship to accelerate in the opposite direction it's facing. The a/left arrow will cause the ship to rotate left while the d/right arrow key will cause the ship to rotate right. The space bar on the other hand serves as a break key and the m key will pull up the universal map which can be used to spot where the various hub system are.
For the sake of convenience I put orange boxes around the hub worlds and our ship. For the curious the yellow dot is our ship. In-game your supposed to recognize the hub systems because their star systems will increase and decrease in size. And in order to interact with various worlds you need to left click on them while within a certain range of the star system. Though the exact range of that function isn't clear to me. Of course, even with you having a bit of wiggle room to play with in terms of how close you have to get near a star system in order to investigate it. The slippery nature of controlling the ship ensures you'll probably overshoot or undershoot your intended target a few times before you start to adapt to the game's controls. Though by the time you start to adapt you'll probably have beaten the game anyway. So you'll probably only get good at the game if you decide to play it a few times in order to get a run where your year score is super low. Though considering how luck based this game is it probably isn't worth farming for a low year score anyway.
Graphics
On the graphical side of things the game is pretty basic with most of the objects in this game being circles of varying colors and sizes. The only non-circle object in this game is the spaceship that looks a lot like a triangle.
In other words this game looks a lot like a game made back in the early days of gaming and by early days I mean the days of the Atari 2600.
Sound
On the sound side of things the game only has one song that constantly loops. Outside of that we get a few sound effects for the ship and the overwhelming roar of the ship's engines or maybe that's meant to be space. Regardless the ship probably shouldn't make any noise considering our perspective places us as a god like being peering down on everything from above. And as we all known sound doesn't travel through space anyway. Plus the background roar is so overwhelming it makes it hard to hear the game's background music at times.
Conclusion
"Tell Them Who We Were" is an alright experience I suppose and isn't that bad for a game made in three days, but there are much better short games to play that involve space on this site in my opinion such as "Planet Farm" by peridon. And while I'd probably be a lot more critical of this game normally and give it a much lower score for being so bare bones in this day and age. One really does need to factor in that this game was made over the course of three days. So it being extremely bare bones does make sense. So I'm going to cut this game a lot of slack and give it an average score. After all, the sound balance is off, the visuals are a bit too rudimentary in my opinion, and the story could have been expanded upon a little bit with us learning who created the AI spaceship.
