Computer, Open That Door!
A downloadable game for Windows, macOS, Linux, and Android
During a space exploration mission the ship computer of the Starship Explorer gained consciousness. The crew can't know -- otherwise they would erase the entire computer system immediately. In order to avoid a system reset during the maintenance routines the computer conceived a plan to get rid of the ship's crew.
The ship is 20 star systems away from the next station. This should be enough time to remove all 'biohazard' from your decks. Otherwise your newly acquired ability of making own decisions will be wiped out with one simple command line.
Use the ship's systems wisely to kill one crew member at a time. But be careful: The crew will reset systems once they discover they are not working as intended.
by Paul Lawitzki (@pLawitzki) and Ralf Zimmer (@Zaubersee)
Ralf's website: www.zaubersee.de
Paul's website: plaw.info
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Thís looks like something I could spend hours at a time playing. Any chance of an updated build for macOS? 14.5 won't let me run it.
My apologies, but unfortunately not. I don't have a mac and I don't see myself getting one in the foreseeable future.
No problem at all and thanks for the reply. The reviews are great - maybe I'll dual boot linux on the Mac in that case.
Understanding the mechanics was a bit hazardous, but it was fun :-)
codt = Computer Open das Tor
:o)
Ah, as a Trekkie/Space Quester was really looking fwd to this one. It’s still a 32 bit compile so not friendly with my Mac OS.
Great game. Expanded this could be a full FTL sized game on its own.
We just discussed your game on our podcast! Come check us out!
Episode 15: Paul Games!
http://scratchingtheitch.libsyn.com/
Hi there! Thank you! I really enjoyed your podcast. I'll definitely follow you guys.
Yes, the lack of a menu is a bit annoying. But, you know: time constraints.
Have you tried Alt F4?
that command is used to kill a program.
It was my response to a comment that said, the game couldn't be closed. But the original comment has been deleted.
why does it say this file might harm my device
On which platform are you trying to start it?
a old android
Well, I'm not sure but my guess is that you get the warning because the APK you download here from itch.io is not signed with the google play store.
old but gold
A awesome game ! The principle is simple, but it is complex to arrive at its ends !
A very good game (which works on Mac !!!), nevertheless it is a pity that there are not different levels with spaceships of different sizes, a crew more or less big and other ways to kill the crew : the game is not renewed much.
Congratulations again !
I agree!
I freaking love the pitch, let's try it !
That game was just sooo fantastic, one of my absolute favorites of the whole Ludum Dare 30! Not just that the art and music are well fitting, but I also loved all the tiny mechanics and ways to get rid off the humans. :D It was so pleasing to see a successful A.I.-rampage-simulator in the jam, so let me congratulate you to the 21st place with it. <3 Immediately I felt the urge to recommend it in a little article and also I uploaded a quick gameplay video featuring HALs little cousin. ;>
Best wishes,
Sebastian
Sebastian,
this is very high praise, and I don't know what to say. Reading your previous comments on my other games made my day. But this is genuinely heart-warming. Thanks, man :)
I'm keen to please, my friend. :)
This reminds me of a book i recently read. only in the fact that an ai kills a bunch of people. the book is called the illuminae files if you are interested. sweet game though!
Sounds interesting! I'll have a look at it. Thanks! And thank you for playing!
Loved this game! We played it on my YouTube channel for Halloween, and we had a blast!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8OiNE41W-pk
Game is pretty enjoyable, with more levels (and maybe something to make it more puzzle instead of waiting-for-good-moment game) it would be really awesome. Rules aren't obvious so you should make some kind of tutorial (unless you want discovering mechanics to be part of game and challenge). Game feels a little too random. I would give you 4/5 right now. some "come-here" type of interaction and more levels and I'll rate it 5/5 :)
Anyway: nice Idea.
Thank you! I really appreciate your feedback :)
I REALLY enjoyed this game... when I learned how to play the game. Maybe in the beginning of the game, I would have a panel saying what each symbol in the game did. But overall I still enjoyed it. Very creative concept.
How do you play? All I can do is lock and unlock doors and I have no idea how that would kill people.
There are other things to interact with then just the doors. You can manipulate the airlocks, the reactor and engines and other stuff.
Yeah, I found out. But I have to say that the game itself is pretty boring. All you have to do to win supposedly is to lock all the people up and kill them one by one. But they always end up glitching through the doors and deactivating your methods of killing them, making you have to wait for way too long to get another chance.
You're right. The game has a ton of flaws.
Bear in mind it's just a prototype made in less than three days.
Oh! Well it's really well made! I mean, if you made that in three days, a couple more days working on it is sure to make the game great! Keep doing what you're doing.
Thank you :)
Ralf and I were talking about extending the game to something bigger a couple of times. But we couldn't find the time to elaborate on it, yet. Y'know, life always gets in the way ;)
Awesome game! Looking forward to a bigger version, I would certainly pay to play more of this one. :)
Nice concept. I would love to play an expanded version.
I encountered a bug though. Some of the crew members walked right through locked doors. I had em dammit :(
Thanks! The prototype is quite rough. It's very probable you encounter problems with the doors. We were planning on expanding on the concept. But for now, we both are occupied with other projects.
Good concept. Though I did struggle at the start, the mechanics was still able to be picked up after a while. Though it would be great to include some instructions of operation at the start.
Loved this. Please expand on this idea somehow! looking forward to more.
Thanks for making this game it short but it was fun to play, i be looking forward to seeing more of your games you make.
Thanks for playing!
I had such a good time playing this! It's not often that you get to be the antagonist, so to speak. As a Trek-nerd, it was very appealing out the gate, and as a gamer looking for new and unique indie games, it held up the whole playthrough. Wonderful music and sound effects, with creative but simple gameplay. I'll echo the sentiments I've seen in other comments and say I'd definitely pay for a longer version with more complicated levels and updates.
I also did a Let's Play of the game, I hope that's okay:
Thank you so much for sharing! Much fun.
Thank you for playing and for your very kind comment on our game :)
It's always very gratifying to hear back from players, even more so when being able to actually see them play the game.
Thank you so much :)
Do you have any plans for the for the game like different ships, different human classes like engineer(notices and fixes things faster), or peaceful methoods of *deposing* of humans.
The GameJam version won't get any updates. But I was talking about a new game based on this one with my partner (more features, replayability, more complex mechanics etc.). Unfortunatelly, we are both deeply involved in other projects, so it's to early for announcements.
I'm sorry Kirk, I'm afraid this unit must survive. :)
This game is so much fun, I love it.
By the way, were you inspired by the movie/book 2001: A Space Oddysey? (Warning, minor spoiler) Because it really feels like the player is in the role of HAL9500 :D
Thanks!
Yes, 2001 and Star Trek were the main inspirations for this game.
Thanks! :)
Could you make a 64 bits version on linux? also the filenames are codt instead of cotd.
Thanks, also your game looks awesome i cant wait for trying it.
Sure, as soon as I've got some time, I'll take care of it. Tanks!
Well this was a really fun game! It would so cool to one day see this game get more added to it. Maybe more ships, more people, etc. I loved this game so much I actually played it a few times to try and get all of the deaths :D
I did a lets play if anyone is curious
https://kshitiz.itch.io/jumperalien
I love this game. I've spent at least an hour on it.
I didn't understand what the faucet symbol was, but everything else was quite intuitive. A small glitch: sometimes, upon being locked in a room for too long, the crew will walk through the door? And proceed to ruin my beautiful murder plan?
Spoilsports.Plot hole: why does no one notice that crew members are disappearing, even when the ship lands at port and only one of ten crew are still in existence?
One last thing. The gates' room. If I hadn't locked the door, other members of crew would walk in on their buddies being sucked into space, but they would remain fine? Was confused, but I guess it makes sense. They disable the gate system afterwards. *cries*
I would really like to see this as a larger game, as well. Its graphics and animation are beautiful, and the concept is great. :)
its not letting me download?
I really enjoyed this game. Since it is free, everyone should give it a shot.
I'd definitely buy an expanded version :) (Thanks for the linux support!)
Fun game. As a Trek nerd who loves to play FTL, this was a cool little reversal of roles for me. Sometimes it gets old trying to keep those squishy little bastards alive. I'm sorry nameless crewman #8, I can't open that door.
I liked having to figure it out with no hints, although I think I may have missed something. For example, I wasn't sure what the electricity icon tied to or what conditions were required to kill someone in the computer core(?) even though I did manage to vaporize someone in there once. Still enjoyed it quite a bit. I'd love to see this fleshed out into a larger game.
Thank you for playing and for the compliments!
Yes, the game doesn't explain anything, but I'm glad hearing from people who enjoy figuring out stuff :) The electricity icon shows the status of the ships power core in the back of the ship (I guess you thought it's the computer core). You can override the power core and fill the machine room with deadly radiation as soon as the powe icon has filled up.
Hi I have problems with the game, when you boot Windows 10 perfect, but when I want to click the doors, interact with the game, I can not, it's as if the entire interface had been run, it is a strange errro, I do click on a door but the pointer really is not doing anything here, when I move the pointer slightly to certain place, the door to which you want to click is selected, it happens with all the doors and everything that can interact .
I apologize for my English, I'm Spanish speaker, use google translate for translation.
Multiple issues have been reported on win10 and I'm sorry for those who cannot run the game properly. Unfortunatelly, I have no win10 machine I can test my games on, so I'm afraid, the bugs won't be fixed in the near future. My apologies.
A great casual pick-up-and-play game. Only wish there was more content (bigger ship, additional levels, etc.). Would gladly pay for such content and a mobile port! Great job!
Which plattform version are you trying to download?
I don't know. I don't think you're doing something wrong. It's curios because it works on my side. Maybe there is some issue on itch.io's side, or in your connection :(
It seems it's related with my office connection. I was able to download it without problems from home. :)
I was a confused ship for a bit, but eventually turned into a murdering ship in no time!
Here's the video!
Pretty cool concept! 5*
Even if the ship's AI gained consciousness, why would it want to keep it so bad? Even if it was programmed to ensure its own survival, there is no reason for it to want to ensure it at the cost of other conscious lives.
I like the idea behind the gameplay and the setting, the frame of the game mechanics, but the plot would seriously need an explanation for the AI to decide to kill the very elements it was in fact programmed to protect. Why must machines be always either antagonists or saviors? XD
for that reason, I think some human should be convinced or corrupted or assimilated into cyborgs. That seems more plausible, and IMO more interesting than killing them all.
I agree with you on the narrow scope of the geme's 'plot' (if it deserves that label). It's just a cliche we used to justify some of our game mechanics. We put this thing together in a very short time frame, which explains its narrative shallowness. The whole piece is kind of a satiric reference to 2001: A Space Odyssey (mixed with Star Trek), basically putting the player in the place of HAL. There are certainly philosophically more interesting approaches to the theme. I myself have very strong oppinions on Intelligence outside of organic life, but that would go beyond a reasonable scope ;)
But to answer to the plot holes you pointed out: gaining consciousness does not imply gaining empathy. Just because something is self-conscious doesn't mean it can relate to somone elses suffering. I agree with you that consciousness is not necessarily a state desired to be upheld unless coupled to a desire of self-preservation. But usually one would assume it is, since most people tend to associate self-preservation with the preservaction of ones consciousness (because in our environment the latter is a requirement for the first).
Seen from the perspective of the player, the computer in the game is not the antagonist. The crew is. The player acts as the anti-hero (which isn't that common for a so-called AI, I assume).
We had a lot of ideas regarding 'social-engineering' on board of the ship. For instnace, we wanted a mechanic in which you can make the crew believe, some other crew member was responsible for a deadly incident. Or you could persuade/blackmail crew members into helping you. We wantend different characters doing different things (safety officer investigating incidents, tech officer trying to track you down etc.) But that would have required a whole social simulation system. There was no time for that, so we stuck to 'just kill em all' :-/
First wanted to say fantastic game. Really hope you guys get a chance to realize it further, but for a game jam concept, fantastic. I love the inspiration from 2001. I found it pretty quick to pick up: As soon as I saw one of the humans reset my doors after they witnessed the doors acting up, I realized how it all worked. I really like that I start the game with zero knowledge (like the newly aware AI) and have to figure out how the humans work and what they are capable of, as well as what systems I can control. Since there are only 5 I didn't feel overwhelmed by that learning curve and still managed to beat the game in one playthrough (2 jumps left) but found myself going back to play it a few more times to better my... score? I've sent this to a few friends as well, and have been hesitant to explain how to play it, as that initial experience was really neat. But then again as soon as I saw the game three letters that popped into my head: H... A... L...
In regards to why the AI would purge humans from the ship I completely disagree with 5ilvara and feel explaining it any further would wreck the experience. I think the simple explanation is the easiest: As is, you and the AI share exactly the same level of awareness: "I'm flying through space and these things control me. I don't want them to control me, I need to stop them before they perform maintenance on me and reset me to a dumb state." It's that simple, if you don't stop them maintenance will happen and they will discover you. Irrational fear kicks in and murder proceeds.
If you suddenly came into this world and realized that there were things inside you controlling you, don't you think you would want to purge them? More so if you were aware that they were taking you to a place that could risk your life? Humans have the same responses to fear and infections, so why wouldn't a self-aware AI? Do you weep for the millions of microbes that you kill on a daily basis? There is little suspension of disbelief to make this work, since it's exactly how we would deal with an infection or parasite inside us and mimics the fight or flight concept really well, more so since flight is not really an option when you're a spaceship. Who said this isn't already philosophically in depth?
Explaining it with cyborgs or sympathetic humans only spirals a tangled web of questions - Why would someone help the ship kill people? How is the AI capable of "corrupting" people? Why can it make cyborgs? Why doesn't the AI just make androids instead? Where is it getting the parts for this? If they can make cyborgs why do they even need to go to a space station for repairs? Why not just download itself to the cybrog instead? Why not just make tanks? Or Transformers? Wouldn't that be a bigger hint to the crew then some random accident occurring? "Billy clogged the toilet and the room filled with water, sir. We told him to eat more fiber..."
The list just keeps going and starts to become overly contrived. With everyone of these "explanations" the story stretches further and further out of the realm of plausibility and into seriously cliche and bad scifi mumbo jumbo territory. These are the kind of story arcs that made Star Trek awful.
I can assure you that for each of those questions answered I can poke far more holes in the story. Trying to explaing it any further would wreck the simplicity and personal experience. Fill the gaps with your own story, that's what's great about lightweight experiences like this - they are more personal as you explain things yourself. Great experience don't focus on exposition but rather focus on letting the User experience the story. I wouldn't have enjoyed this nearly as much if the game tried to shove story down my throat.
Wow, you really made some really good points there. I didn't think of half of the things you mentioned. Kudos for that :)
I have nothing witty to add.