Spooky, but in a haunted robots in an alien-future-mystery sort of way, THE SIGNAL FROM TÖLVA is on sale now on itch and Steam.

A thread
https://bigrobotltd.itch.io/the-signal-from-tlva https://store.steampowered.com/app/457760/The_Signal_From_Tlva/

If Sir, You Are Being Hunted was our zeitgeisty tweedpunk debut, then The Signal From Tölva was our difficult prog-rock second album. Channelling seventies sci-fi and folkloric space-noodling, it is a offbeat space exploration and combat game with ghosts and non-euclidean mazes.

The fiction, much of which can be found in the PDF "manual", which acts as a sort of RPG sourcebook to the world, is one of my favourite things I have ever worked on, and @casskhaw did an amazing job of conjuring concepts from the ether we'd working so hard on.

It's worth picking up because you get a free 12-hour game with the PDF... McQue's art helped, of course, and attempting to do justice to that stuff was at the heart of the creative endeavour. That's a theme we're going to return to in the near future. In the meantime, yeah:

But also: Tölva was also demanding and challenging as a project in ways I've never been able to precisely describe, and I suspect I need to get into the post-mortem of both this and Sir in some detail in the near future, so that I can articulate that therapeutically.

In some ways Tölva was a classic of "do what you love" becoming a sort of Greek punishment of the Gods. I could have stayed there texturing its highland canyons for the rest of my existence. But at some point you have to release the game...

What's most interesting about Tölva, though, was the delivery of a tone and atmosphere that was unlike anything else. It didn't always land, as perplexed Steam reviews illustrate, but some people seemed to understand its esoteric demands, as Matt did:

The thing I delight most in, however, was that it was a world that carried on without you. This was best evidenced by watching a robot patrol leave a base and head off into the world. They could navigate the entire 4km map, and would stop off to scan artifacts or have a chat.

Most open world games contain a great deal of smoke and mirrors to make everything appear to work, and there was certainly some here, but the robots in Tölva are "real". They will go about their tasks and, if you stay with them, persist for as long as they survive the dangers.

Oddly, that's the bit of this I am most proud of: that the robots carry out their missions, explore the world, capture bases, skirmish with enemy patrols, all without any reference to the player and what they are doing. I love that about open-world games, and it worked for Tölva.

There's something weirdly poetic about these solipsistic wandering chaps, chirping away to themselves and then snarling in robot when they encounter their rivals, often only surviving with your assistance. And I would sometimes follow them for hours, just existing.

Perhaps a slightly acquired pleasure, yep, but that simple journey kept me happy as I checked that the player couldn't get stuck in a rock, or that the game's myriad secrets were properly hidden.

Anyway, truth: you should take a look if you are able to spare $5, because this project included extraordinary efforts from @TomNullpointer @MakesLtd @forcesofgood1 @casskhaw @ianmcque @Olninyo @DoodleDemmy and others not of twitter. Their work deserves to be long enjoyed.