Updates, inspirations, and what's next for The Archives of Trevosa
For Ludum Dare 59, we created a narrative deduction game about translating an unknown language in order to fill in a multigenerational family tree. It’s been awesome to see the response to the game in the past month!
In this post I’ll share an update on some of the post-jam changes we’ve made since then, and what’s next for the game.
I love writing long devlogs talking about the design of the game and how it came together during the jam, but I haven’t had time to write that up yet, so I’ll just focus on the post-jam updates - and I’ll also sneak in a few thoughts on the design while I’m at it.
And I have no shame in saying Trevosa’s design is drawn from direct inspiration from existing amazing games, so I definitely want to mention some of those as we go. 🙂
Post-jam updates
The true heir
The central premise of the game is you’re working on the family tree to figure out who’s the true heir - but with the time crunch of the jam weekend, we barely got the chance to even agree amongst ourselves what the logic behind that was! So in a post-jam update, we made sure you have to select who’s the true heir and added some extra documents to lay out the conditions you can follow to figure it out.
Tree validation popup
As a narrative deduction descendent of The Return of the Obra Dinn, Trevosa naturally waits to validate answers until you have three correct. This prevents brute forcing by trying every name until one works, while still rewarding players for getting things right.
One of the biggest UX gaps in the jam version was this wasn’t shown off, it just happened. Since then, we’ve added a popup that gives you that excitement of having gotten it right.
And just recently I adjusted the start of the game: now, the first family member you fill in correctly locks in immediately, solo. After that, it’s the next two. Then it’s back to the usual three. I know this is a challenging game to get started on, so I hope getting some quicker validation will make the start of the game more engaging for players trying it out.
Document sort order
We fixed a jam version bug so that documents are now correctly sorted in timeline order. (And then fixed the document findability issue that arose from that fix.)
Sorting the documents is important to how the limited search results work, because it means that searching for common words will tend to return documents from the early parts of the story, whereas finding documents from the later parts of the story requires more targeted searches. That creates a rough arc to what you’ll discover when.
This part is directly inspired by Her Story. While Trevosa has some areas that could go smoother and some documents that are too hard to ever stumble upon, one of the best parts of the Her Story database-game model is that discovering things in a non-linear way feels really fun and intriguing to play no matter how it shakes out, at least for me!
Improved undiscovered document count
This feature (among others 😄) is directly inspired by The Roottrees Are Dead, which includes an “intuition” count pointing you to where clues can be found to discover new evidence or character info. It’s a great form of hint that points you in the right direction without giving anything away.
We don’t have hints for where to find peoples’ names and titles set up in Trevosa, but I did want to make sure there was help for tracking down the last few documents. The jam version shipped with a counter of how many terms in the document you hadn’t searched yet; now it counts how many undiscovered documents you can reach via searching the terms in the document. It’s disabled by default to avoid clutter, but you can turn it on any time in Settings.
Other fixes
- Typos and other document updates for clarity
- Filter section for the Archive - did you know you can search for any text, including English words, via the filter?
- Settings tab with volume controls for the music
- Save game fixes so that your progress transfers even if there’s an update (like new documents added)
What’s next
I can definitively state that this is not the last you’ll hear of Trevosa! We’re really excited to keep playing in this world and to take everyone’s feedback and ideas on how to make the game better than what we could make in a weekend.
More concrete details are coming soon, but I did make an announcement about our plans in the Jamwitch Games discord server, so please join if you’re interested. Alternately, feel free to follow jamwitch on itch so you’re notified of the next update post.
What does that future version hold? Besides expanding the tree, story, and language, we have a few ideas for what to add. Here’s one thing that’s come up a lot:
The lexicon
This is the biggest piece of feedback we’ve heard - players want a convenient way to take notes on the words they’re translating and to see those translations in context of the documents.
We’re now planning a lexicon where newly discovered words are listed and you can enter your own notes and translations. It’ll be on the left side of the screen, so you can see it at the same time as the documents without having to toggle back and forth.
Some people have also asked for the translations to be automatically applied to the document text once you’ve entered them. I’m not convinced that would make the game better, though - I think it would take away some of the fun challenge of really mastering Trevosan.
A good comparison and additional recommendation is Chants of Sennaar. I got the tip to not use the in-game notebook when playing Sennaar, since that automatically glosses and translates the text for you - but instead to take my own physical notes so I really got a chance to learn the words. I definitely think that’s a much better experience if you like language puzzles.
So for Trevosa, I’d rather make it convenient to check your translation only after you’ve tested yourself on your growing knowledge of Trevosan. I’m thinking of a tooltip on hover that shows the notes/translation, so you can choose when to mouse over the word and reveal it. (And anyone who wants to make their own notes can just skip using the in-game lexicon.)
What do you think? Balancing smoothness and convenience against the fun friction of figuring things out yourself seems like a really interesting design challenge, so I’m excited to try things out. If you have thoughts, or would be curious to playtest a version of this eventually, join us in the Jamwitch Games discord! 😁
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Beside that, the team has also been doing a lot of brainstorming about new stories and interesting culture and language details that we want to include… but it’s too early to share any of that, so please stay tuned!
And again, it’s been amazing to hear from everyone enjoying Trevosa! We so appreciate everyone who’s left a comment with their thoughts, recommended the game to a friend, or even kindly left a tip - those all make us excited to expand on what we have now. Thank you!
Comments
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still working on finishing but really like this game. very up my alley, apparently!
Just wanted to say I really enjoyed this game and would love to see more !! 🥰
I look forward to seeing more from you! I love language games like this. It's one of those games that made me really wish I knew how to code.
I think hovering over a Trevosan word should display your notes about the word, not your translation. It's similar, but it puts the focus on describing what the word means rather than finding an English word with a similar meaning (although such a word definitely belongs in those notes). A big part of what makes languages cool is that they don't all have words for the same things, so it's not good to encourage players to replace Trevosan words with English ones, or to think that they're equivalent.
Amazing game, by the way! I had way too much fun. And the language is amazing. (it also helped me think about the value of history, which is not what i expected lol)
Thank you!
That’s the plan - we just have a text field in the lexicon, you can put whatever notes you want there.
But in the time since writing this devlog, I changed my mind on the hover. Now if you click a word, that opens it in the lexicon. It’s just a click, so it’s not hard to do, but it feels more like doing a lookup in your notes like a good scholar rather than having them handed to you in a tooltip.
That’s my current thought anyway. In the next week or two I’ll share a preview of the updated UI in a new devlog.
Coming in a little late to the conversation but I wanted to mention that as someone who is dyslexic yet loves learning languages and language games, some of the documents were really hard to follow because I wasn't able to fully translate the words on my own. I knew they had some significance, but I didn't truly understand them or the context of them being used in the documents. Having something that would be able to provide proper definitions and/or having an accessibility toggle that would let you sub the translation over the Trevosan would be incredibly helpful, even if you feel it takes away from the challenge.
Thank you for commenting, that’s a great point! It will be better to have the option there so players can play the way that works for them. I appreciate the perspective!
(Not late at all btw, we’re working through these things on the expanded version now and always appreciate feedback and thoughts!)
I really liked how the translation mechanic worked in The Apothecary of Trubiz, with your translation written above, in a smaller and more muted color. Your latest guess can be seen with no action, but you would still naturally try to read the untranslated word first (which in the case of Trubiz doesn't much work in their favour since the letters of the language is a bit same-y, but should work much better with the latin alphabet used for Trevosa).
Hi I encountered some difficulties today when playing this game for the first time that I am not able to type in anything. It does not work for search nor notes. I'm not sure whether it is a bug or not. Would you suggest any solutions to this?
Oh no! That’s a new one.
What browser are you using? Does refreshing the page help? It’s working for me on Chrome and Firefox, so you might try a different browser and see. My guess is it’s not a fundamental bug in the game, but some sort of interaction with a browser extension you have, or something like that.
I agree that we definitely shouldn't auto-translate Travosin words into English in the documents. That would take away far too much from the game. I do, however, think that a large improvement for the game would be the dictionary idea you talked about. A couple of suggestions I have for it would be, most importantly, to have the hover tooltip of your translation guess be a toggleable option. For someone who wants to learn Trevosan better, having the hover pop up could spoil the experience a bit if they end up accidentally hovering over a word or start to rely on it too heavily. If it is a toggleable option that will allow you to turn it off and be forced to cross-reference your own notes more.
Additionally, I am not sure if you plan to have the dictionary lock in words like how portraits do; however, I would recommend one of two things: either have them simply serve as a more organized version of the current notes page with no confirmation, or only lock them in if you have 5 or so right. I know 5 seems like a lot, but I believe that a lot of the fun of the game is making guesses for what the words mean and then continually refining them as you get more examples of the words being used. If they are locked in too easily, then that part is taken away.
Makes sense to make it toggleable, we’ll see how it plays.
Yeah, I definitely don’t want to lock in the translations, for the reasons you mentioned! I don’t think it’s possible anyway - what if someone phrased their translation differently than what we happened to put as the answer?
There is also that I made extensive use of previous language experience to notice and extend the dictionary I created in the notes to include words that logically could exist (I think I only had one that didn't actually exist in the documents) but that I then fed back into the Archive search to find new documents... so allowing the player to add words to the dictionary, even if they don't exist would be something I would like - though if it isn't there I would probably just turn off the in-game dictionary and keep notes myself ;)
Yep, the current prototype adds a word to the lexicon if you search for it, even if you haven’t seen it in a document yet.
Nice :D
a minor suggestion: have a setting for the Trevosan words to have your translation above it and maybe a little shrunken down, kinda like how in Japan they use katakana to make it easier for younger players/readers to understand certain words in games/manga
That’s similar to the tooltip idea, except I’m requiring the player to hover on the word to see it.
I think that’s important so you get a chance to think of the translation yourself before the answer is revealed. Of course we can see how people feel in playtesting.
just realized I forgot to specify as a toggle in the settings
for example, I've noted down what olesata means, so now instead of hovering over it the translation is there already
idk how you've implemented it, but if there's several untranslated words in a sentence, it might be annoying having to hover over each individual word to remind yourself what they all mean
Yep, if people playtest the tooltips and still feel they want a further step, we can have different settings for it.
Interestingly I was wondering if there were necessarily one "correct" answer to some of the words... some of them seemed to be more sentence descriptions and others the translation would depend on the point of view of the translator - e.g. terrorist, rebel or freedom-fighter... the versatility of the open answer was nice (a system similar to the name system in "Type Help" by William Rous might work?)
Either way, I have to admit that my suggestions are mostly for the benefit of others (if they want them) because I would probably turn them off... I really enjoyed it all as it was and was only disappointed by the shortness of the story! ;) - Also it might have been nice to add some parts of the tree that were essentially unrelated to the main line as it would have added a bit of difficulty or just a red herring for the main line game.
If you wanted to extend the story while still having the original in place or the expand the story sideways without making it too difficult to search up documents maybe it would be worth considering adding the ability to choose which generation's documents you are searching for (or some other count... I was intrigued by the season references but they didn't seem to add much information but if you could start the search from a particular date then it would give the player a reason to try and build their own timeline... it would also mean you could revert the document list ordering change ;)
Absolutely loved Archives of Trevosa! We're looking to make a similarly inspired game and I'm curious about what coding language/programme you used? I know both Roottrees and Lost Wiki use Godot
Thanks! It’s just vanilla HTML/JS, which I always use for game jams since it’s super fast to pull together and works well for a UI-based game.
For the auto-translate part, I did start to translate some of the words in the notes, but I ended up not noting anything, and i could actually understand everything, it was genuinely so cool to be able to do that, so I agree for the auto-translate part removing some fun.
Loved this! I think I played after most of the updates you're describing had already been in place. I was a little confused about the rule at the end (there was one word that I couldn't figure out the meaning to) but I got there eventually!
I love knowing about the updates to the game and appreciate the recommendations! Not having to toggle back and forth to the notes definitely removes some frustration, and having more context by knowing the documents are in timeline order. I do wish at least some documents had date hints, if not an actual obvious date, but I also understand that that might be too much information to juggle or make the puzzle too easy by connecting years to generations.
Good thoughts on the dates! Each document does have a date internally, and I was wondering if we should just show that to the player (given that documents are already ordered.) It might add an interesting layer of puzzling to ask the player to work out some specific puzzles using that date information… We’ll have to try it and see how it works out.
If dates were to be added to all the documents, some of the puzzles might have to be rebalanced, but I feel like thematically it would make sense to have dates attached to each document. After all, we are supposed to be going through a document archive, and those kinds of archives usually would be quite thorough in making sure dates are attached to important documents. However, this would also allow for an interesting puzzle where you get some documents whose date is either unknown, missing, or damaged. You would have to find out a rough date for the document before you could fully use it, and it could lead to some interesting puzzles.
Since the documents are currently sorted by date, this would mean that the documents without a date would have to be put in a separate section or smth until you enter it's aproxamate date, at which point it could be put in its proper place in the sort order.
I loved figuring out the words on my own and reading it that way, found it more unique than auto translation and felt like I really learned the language a bit
Ooohh there's been more updates to the ending?? Time to re-re-play it!
And I exactly agree re: applying translation and playing Sennaar that way -- though I did input my notes and translation in the game, just never using the validation tool that smoothes out the final translation. Also, for some of the words and concepts in Trevosa, there aren't necessarily direct English translations, which I loved :)
This post is covering all the changes we’ve made since the jam, not just recent ones, so sounds like you might have already seen it - if you were able to enter the True Heir title, then there’s nothing new beyond that.
And for sure, we’re hoping to add a few more cases of words without clear 1-1 translations in the expanded version!
Without clear translations is one thing but 1-1 translations are hard to avoid in English if you've multiple big enough English dictionaries! ;) - the full Oxford dictionary doesn't even contain everything used in English, never mind in historical, technical or geographical niches of English ;)
Having said that I'd be happy to take up the challenge :P - unless you just start making up concepts that couldn't be in English... not that I know what those concepts might have to entail to avoid what English users have already imagined! :)
That’s why I said one-to-one! Sevol and leevoth are our existing examples where there’s not a single word English translation, and olesata is a cultural word where what it entails is clear to the speakers but not immediately to the player. We want to add more like those.
*whisper* In Japanese, anime and manga niches the japanese terms are general understood and used in English conversation - I'm not a linguist so I'm not going to argue whether they are therefore English or not but they are certainly used as such... and I wondered if you might already know this since the language of Trevosan has some similarities to Japanese after all... no apparent plural and differentiation of age amoungst relatives to some degree but then it has a neuter gender like German and the word structures are more like German compounds... but then again loads of languages use these same structures and I'm an IT Major, not a Linguist so I really don't know much about many human languages! :)