See it running
The short version
- Solo Godot 4.6 demo. One night, one booth, one dial.
- Tuning is the game: a coarse lock and a fine lock do not hear the same transmission.
- The Ministry phrasebook and the log sheet are where you decide what gets written down.
- Playable in the browser on itch.io. A Windows build is the next cut. The night is still in progress, so expect bugs.
What it does
- One watch in the chair: hunt a signal, hold the lock, file what the sheet will accept
- Coarse lock gives the words Command will stamp. Fine lock, held against drift, can show more
- The phrasebook on the desk is the Ministry translation. It is not always what you hear
- The log takes a frequency, a callsign, and a category. It will accept a line you did not fully verify
- Desk tools you pick up: log, newspaper, phone, lighter. Mouse to look. S turns you to the door
The thought
You are a local in someone else's uniform. The officers who read your sheets do not speak the language of the people below the ridge, and you do, so they put you in the chair. The demo is one watch on 14 November 1958. Find a signal, hold the lock, write what the sheet will accept.
Mechanics
The dial is the only twitch in the room. A / D sweeps the band. Holding the right mouse switches to the fine gear, a window about an order of magnitude tighter, and the carrier drifts faster there so a fine lock is a hold, not a parked needle. A coarse lock is enough for the official words. Stay in the fine window and a second layer can come through: who else is in the room, a tell the phrasebook will not print. Looking away does not freeze the drift. The book, the sheet, and the teletype all cost you the hold. The log is a pre-printed Ministry sheet. Frequency fills from the dial. Callsign is chosen from what you might have heard. Category is a stamp: military, civilian, or unknown. Six lines, no second sheet. The form will take a variant you never verified.
Systems
The booth is the interface. There is no inventory screen. You click a tool to pick it up: the log, the newspaper, the phone, the lighter. S turns you toward the door. RadioReceiver owns the dial and the lock quality and nothing else. It does not draw, and it does not play audio. The sheet files through an event, and nothing calls back into the form. Drift and the fine-lock dwell live on the night, not on the transmission resource, so a restart does not begin the next watch already half-played. The phrasebook is the Ministry translation of your own language, issued so officers who do not speak it can pretend to supervise you. Holding it over a live transmission shows the official line. That line is what Command will accept, and it is not always the sentence you heard.
Under the hood
Godot 4.6, one room. The dial, the waterfall, the sheet, the phrasebook, and the phone are separate features that meet on an event bus. Lock maths stays in RadioReceiver: coarse window 1.1 kHz, fine window 0.18 kHz, fine drift at 1.6× so the hold stays possible. The public demo is HTML5, one watch. The full night asks for six entries by dawn.
Controls
What I would do differently
The first player asked for a desktop build. In the browser, Escape keeps dropping fullscreen, and a listening game wants you in the chair. A Windows export is in progress. The demo is still being built, so the night has bugs.