The Archives of Trevosa
"I am Ludir, oloth-til of Oreleth-cyno-taayen of Trevosa. If this signal has reached you, the situation is dire. The dreadful nyscet lies in wait to destroy, and theevei look to the solaam for an omen: who is the true heir?"
Search through the hidden archives of Trevosa, translate their cultural terms, and uncover the relationships within a complex royal family tree. Can you untangle all seven generations? A challenging narrative deduction game inspired by The Roottrees Are Dead.
How to Play
- Your goal is to identify the name and title for each of the 30 family members.
- On the right, read the documents you've discovered and search for clues.
- Search Trevosan words or family members' names to find the first three documents mentioning them.
- Click a word to search for it.
- Or go to the Search tab and type in your search.
- Based on what you learn, set each person's name and title in the tree. Once 3 people are correct, they'll lock in.
Tips
- Stuck? Enable undiscovered document count under Settings, then check the Archive. This will show how many new documents you can find by searching the words in each document.
- Click on the right side of a scroll to set a bookmark color - this is just for notetaking. Use it for documents you want to revisit, etc.
- Use the notes tab or your own notes!
- You can always use the Filter section at the top of the Archive to search for any text in the documents you've already found.
⚠️ Progress is saved to browser storage, except in Safari, which doesn't allow storage from embedded games.
Credits
Originally created in 72 hours for Ludum Dare 59. This is the post-jam version with some additional improvements.
- Bucktown did design and writing.
- Marcus did design, writing, and music.
- Celia did design, code, and UI.
- Rose did the art.
Want more Trevosa?
We have more plans for the game - join our Discord server for all the details or follow Jamwitch on itch if you want to be notified of future update posts.
Development log
Comments
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I loved it can't wait for more like this
Loved this! I was definitely getting "Her Story" vibes (and was glad to be proven right by your updates post)! I'll have to try out the other games you mentioned as inspirations. Thank you for sharing this game for free! If you ever make another game along these lines, I'd love to play it!
i really enjoyed this!
This was heaps of fun and I'd love to see a sequel!
this was great! had to resort to brute forcing the last 3 but spent a good few hours on this, would love a sequel
I really had fun solving this
Excellent game - just wanted to add some overarching lore thoughts (there's a couple of comments that reference it from a month or so ago, also sorry if I don't spell everything correctly.)
Solaam - its used in a few ways - it's mentioned that they can step on people, but also that they seem to provide food. Also, Ludir is asking "solaam" to help solve the crisis... they also use solaam when referring to prophecies (or omens I guess). Lastly there's reference to a new Solaam varelent (sp) that gives more food...
I think that Solaam are regular humans, and that the theveii are tiny people (like secret of arriety). They don't seem to grow their own food, and scavenge/forage which is why they are running out of food. They have specific rules about not staying out in the open and keeping quiet, im assuming the threshold is the front door of a house and the field of beasts is the backyard
Seems like the animal that killed the 2nd queen is snake (spine and scales but no legs) but they specifically describe it as large. Thinking the mascet are maybe mice or rats (the seelot are worms, and rodent tails kind of look like worms). And thinking the big monster is a new family cat (or dog) that's eating their mice mounts.
An absolute delight
This was great! Took a few hours but I managed to solve everything. I loved how everytime you learned a new word, I reread the old text and was able to figure out so much more. Can't wait for more!
sooooo fun estin basheel is just like me fr
So fun! It starts off kind of hard but once you get into it it's awesome. I'm probably going to go back and read all the lore since it seemed very interesting. The second and third generations are the best.
I CANNOT RECCOMEND THIS GAME ENOUGH!!
★★★★★ / ★★★★★
(my thoughts + tips below)
if not for the puzzle aspect, FOR THE LORE!
this game took me about 3-4 hours (i did not skip ANY lore and I read through every document a few times. lore skipping will probably result in 45min~2hrs of playtime)
i cannot believe that such an amazing game was made in such a short amount of time. the dev team did absolutely wonderful and i hope you guys continue to make more wonderful little games like this!
some small tips to help you: (these aren't spoilers, they will just make the game a little easier!)
(keep scrolling to see my interpretation of the words! while some of them may not be accurate, it helped me a ton!)
!! SEMI-SPOILERS AHEAD !!
!! BE WARNED !!
here's my deduction of word meanings:
leevoth = brother
leevaith = sister
leeveth = sibling
talo = (grand)father
talai = (grand)mother
tale = (grand)parent
oloth-til = son
olaith-til = daughter
olethtil = child
oloth-obrao = grandson
olaith-obrao = granddaughter
oleth-obrao = child
calserom = protective male figure / godfather
calseraim = protective female figure / godmother
olesata = exam to become heir
varvei-tabeir = wedding
varvei-cynvei = funeral
cynai = queen
cyno = king
cyne = current royalty
varelen = friend / co-worker?
beelon = king (partner to royalty)
beelen = partner to royalty
beelain = queen (partner to royalty)
todii = unimporant / outsider
theevei = people of the kingdom
oltev = project to get food, founded by sartina
tysetei = record of anything (writing, speeches, etc.) created by cyne
happy solving!
"coming of age"? - but context is not sufficient to know for sure I think and "consort" is the word you are looking for ;)
P.S. One of your translations is definitely politer than context would suggest! ;)
Varvei-cynvei seemed to mean "coronation" to me and Varelen seems to mean "family" or "house" and while Oltev could just be the plan or project to get access to food, I took the literal translation to be tunnel or passage.
Todii I took to mean "fool." But I think all of these are vague enough that different interpretations are valid.
I think varvei is the term for celebrations in general because of how it was used in Threatening Note, referring to nightly varvei. Then cynvei = coronation and tabeir = wedding goes along fine with varvei.
This game was a lot of fun lol, all these people messy and good of Ludir!
Ngl I think my favourite generation is the one with the dysfunctional siblings who shade each other constantly. No wonder shit immediately fell apart.
really great combination of language and relation deduction :D I had a great time with it
This was really really really great!! I deeply love deduction games like this: a little bit challenging, but I could still figure it out in the end. Thank you for this great game!
This was really good! Thanks for making it :)
This was so cool! I loved picking up on the words and honestly I think it's an important part of why learning another language is important. This was dope.
This was great! I love deduction games, it felt fun and rewarding to figure out the rough translations/general story and it felt solvable (no brute forcing needed to finish it). I'd love to see more like it :)
I loved this game. I hope to see more like it in the future.
Can not recommend this enough, especially if you like Chants of Sennaar, Her Story, or Telling Lies
I only wish there was a way to like, put in guesses for what words mean, in a similar way to how Chants of Sennaar handles it, however by the end I was recognizing what each word meant and it was fairly easy to follow the plot.
(sidenote: just read the update)
The "hover" idea sounds amazing!!! Even if it didn't like, autocheck it for you, it'd still be nice as a handy guide for those who want it, while still being easy to ignore for those who don't
Such a fun game
This was so much fun the lore is so interesting to me
loved this!! spent like a good 1-2 hours on this and it was challenging but not frustratingly difficult
This is genuinely one of the best GameJam games I've had the pleasure of playing. The writing is great, the concept is unique, and the pacing is tight.
I would 100% buy a full game like this.
I super loved this! I would love a translation guide now that I've finished it--still never totally puzzled out what "solaam" or "olesata" mean, but it was so fun. Looking forward to a potential lexicon update? Either way, this was so highly enjoyable and I'll be sending it to some friends and checking out the rest of your games! Thank you for putting this out!
Thanks! The biggest hint to understanding solaam is in the Final Note.
"Solaam" is you, a normal person who likes communicating with the tiny people. "Olesata" means adult ceremony. Besides, after collecting all the scrolls, you can search for the key words in the second column in a convenient way
that was SO MUCH FUN
I've finish this wonderful game in 4 hours, no breaks, just obsesion. Such a great experience, especially for my linguistic-mayor brainworm, thank you so much for making it. <3
I did not think I'd be able to complete this game, but it was very easy to understand. Thank you for making this game.
Me too. I started three days ago but stop because i just could guess who was the exile. It took me more than three hours but i finally got it and it was really fun. In the beginning i was stressed out but at the end i enjoy it.
This one was a fun puzzle! I will admit that I had to do a bit of guessing at the very end, but solving everything else was a real treat. I also appreciate the inclusion of non-binary people in the game as well!
Amazing game! Reminds me very much of The Roottrees Are Dead (except this has original art) and Type Help. Had a lot of fun solving this and figuring out the meanings of these words. What a lovely twist on the 'solve backwards' genre of puzzles!
Thanks! And to correct the record, the Steam version of Roottrees has totally original and great art (as well as a whole new segment of the game beyond the Itch version!)
oh, awesome! thanks for letting me know :)
I played this whole thing in an hour to an hour and a half, and I absolutely ADORE this game! i was very excited to see a few nonbinary characters as well, my notes have "gender neutral!!!" very excitedly after the neutral word for spouse lol.
after reading the recent update notes, i completely agree that an auto-translate feature (albeit based on your own inputs) would take some of the fun out of the language puzzle aspect of this. i was reading things out loud and it was really fun to realize that i didnt need to refer back to my notes to remember what something meant!
and even though i guessed the correct answer earlier than i had the evidence to support it, i still LOVED figuring out what went on behind the scenes to lead to what happened. all this to say that it's absolutely worth the time spent solving this puzzle :]
Wait... was Nyreen non-binary? Because they are always referred to by they/them
And, they are referred to as Cyne- not Cyno- (king) or Cynai- (queen) just simply "ruler". I just wanted to know if this was intentional
Indeed! There’s another nonbinary character too.
Wait its tyreil isnt it? By the way I really loved the game
What an elegant and entertaining deduction game! And the twist at the end made me so happy I clapped and woke up the nyscet.
This was excellent! I love the part of the game when you realize the uh, scale of it all :3
The game was fun but I didn't get what was the difference between sevol and leevoth - don't they mean the exact same thing?
Those are two words that don’t have a 1-1 translation in English, but looking closely at the examples in the tree should reveal the distinction.
I took “sevel” to mean “sibling” and “leeveth” to mean (basically) “cousin”. So when Feif calls Basheet (iirc) “sevol” and Basheet answers back and calls him “leevoth”, I took it as him distancing himself, like “you are no brother of mine”
I took “sevol” for “younger brother” and “leevoth” as “older brother” and I think it works pretty well
I think you're probably right
I think I'm a little confused on why Ludir and his familial line are false heirs, can someone explain?
did you read the document "rules of succession"?
yes, it was the last document i found actually, still need help
Check out The Scepter Crisis document too.
What keyword do you need to search to find it?
*SPOILERS* the line of succession requires a spouse, but Ludir is not married. He cannot inherit without a spouse.
they also need to have passed their olesata, and we don't have anything confirming Ludir has done so
so, the next ruler needs to be a direct decsendant of the first ruler aka Estin-Orvet. the next ruler also needs to be descentant of the youngest child previously in line for the throne, before Nolveth came and changes a lot of things. This youngest child is Morfal, who is Ludir's great uncle, but Lonara's grandfather. The rules of succession also states that the next ruler needs to be married, and lonara is married. Ludir is not. Therefore, Lonara is the true heir.
please tell me if its to confusing
I enjoyed this game a lot more than expected!
I'm in love with this game, I hope to see more like it!!! Great work!
Fantastic little game.