Call Me Back When You Get This

Is anybody listening?

You are newest custodian of the Herald-IV, nth in line to man a space station at the edge of oblivion, dedicated to identifying and communicating with extraterrestrial life—if it even exists.

With only the company of your ship's computer (affectionately nicknamed "OZ") and the traces left behind from the Custodian before you, your job is simple: keep the ship in working order and select transmissions from the Archive—all of human history summarised in a collection of text, image and sound. First contact could very well be in your hands.

Oh, and try not to go mad with the silence like your predecessor did.

Project Info

Status: ideation/planning

Type: exploration game

Genre: science fiction

DevBlog: @transmissionlost on Tumblr

Intent

Call Me Back When You Get This is my next project after Vessel is completed. I plan for it to be something between an exploration game or a digital artwork/experiment/thingy, but this is still an evolving idea. It's ambitious, but fuck it I've got years to learn. and just think about it, it would be so cool!!!

***LAST SPOILER WARNING FOR MY IRL FRIENDS***

Inspiration

This project is inspired by my study of different communication models and the understanding that "perfect" one-to-one communication of ideas is impossible; to be misunderstood is inevitable, to be understood in wholeness is impossible, and we can only ever aim for "good enough". This is bleak and also terrifying.

What better setting to explore the fragility, desperation and beauty of human connection than the vast and empty reaches of space?

This project is also brought to you by my absolute distaste for LLMs and T2Is infiltration into creative fields and human communication. Write your emails yourselves you cowards!

Imagine This...

Someone gives you a USB. It has a game on it: "Call Me Back When You Get This".

You play as a that you are alone in space. You are transmitting messages hoping someone will answer. And someone does. You are not alone!

The archive breaks, but that's no problem. You can write your own letters, draw your own images, record your own voice. Anything to keep communicating—the first contact with alien life, and it's with you!

...But the messages don't seem to actually respond to you, even as they keep coming. Do they not understand?

OZ has been faking them all along. He didn't want you to end up like the last Custodian, mad from loneliness. Nobody was ever listening.

He's glitching more and more. You shut him off. Now it's really only you on this spaceship.

As the screen goes black, you're transported into an art gallery. You see what the players before you selected from the archive. You see what they drew, and wrote, and said when it broke. And then, you see your own right there beside them.

The game ends. You hand the USB off to the next person. There's a game on it: "Call Me Back When You Get This".