What is After Now Archeology

After Now Archeology is an augmented virtuality puzzle game. It means, one can not play the game without going outside of the game's realm searching for information. The idea is quite opposite to augmented reality games, where the game is taken to the outside world. I started this blog to document the process of designing and producing the game.

The idea and process for making the game started way back in 2003, when I bumped up to Timehunt, a puzzle game with huge amount of extra-game linking and information. Timehunt was ridiculously difficult, but as long as I managed to play it, it was great fun for challenge-hungry brains. Timehunt went offline around 2005, when no one had solved all of its puzzles. After Timehunt I've played a couple of similar-ish games: Torment, First Door, In Memoriam... But I wanted to create something of my own, so I started collecting stuff.

In 2010 I got accepted in Aalto University School of Art and Design, as the first batch of Game Design majors ever. As usual, this kind of education demands a master's thesis work to be done. Since I had developed the idea in my head for several years and had quite a lot of ideas for the game, I decided to propose After Now Archeology as my thesis work, and here we are.

After Now Archeology does not rely much on game mechanics. As Jesper Juul classified, games can be classified as "games of emergence" and "games of progression" (Juul, 2005, p. 67-72). Quite many of the so-called puzzle games are games of emergence, where the gameplay consists of interacting with the rules, without specific long-term goals (e.g. Tetris, Bejeweled, sudoku). After Now Archeology's structure resembles adventure games, rather than action-puzzles. There is a clear goal of solving the whole game, and the player's progression can be clearly measured based on the amount of puzzles she has been able to solve. Usually there is only one way to solve the puzzle, which is common also in adventure games.

Most of the game's puzzles are not really mechanical ones. Game mechanics and interactions are there just to give the player some flavor to the brain teasing riddle solving. It is not too far fetched to call After Now Archeology a riddle game.