Exographer news & patch notes

Developing a metroidvania inevitably brings speedrunning into the picture. While we were building Exographer, we knew some players would be tempted to speedrun it. We even left a few “design flaws” here and there for them, especially regarding the gluonic boots. Our next game, still in the works, won’t be anything like a metroidvania, but it will be just as well-suited for speedrunning. When we created our Discord server, we immediately opened a channel dedicated to speedrunners. That’s how Zaldeeu, our very first PC challenger, found us. It was such a powerful feeling to watch someone persist over and over to achieve the best time and, finally, beat Exographer in under 45 minutes! We’re looking forward to seeing more challengers, like Johann, who is currently speedrunning the PS5 version. Both of them kindly agreed to take some time and answer a few questions about their speedrunning experience with Exographer. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/44899177/02f0dd97c15e71713a75dbfbe0a36d58c7f3219b.gif

When did you start speedrunning?

Johann: I started three years ago and I’m still going! Zaldeeu: I’ve been speedrunning on my YouTube channel for about a year and a half, but I really started 2 or 3 years ago.

What are you looking for in speedrunning?

Johann: A way to surpass myself. Usually, I set a sub-hour goal, and then I try to beat my personal best. Zaldeeu: What I like most is learning to speedrun everything and not limiting myself to a single game. Recently, I started taking part in Celeste contests like 3S3R, and I really enjoyed it. I find it very exciting to search for new strategies or glitches to achieve an even better time.

What games have you speedrun in the past?

Johann: A lot! But if I had to mention a few, I’d say Minecraft, Super Mario Odyssey, Celeste, The Smurf Dream demo, and Astro’s Playroom. Zaldeeu: I can’t name them all since I’ve speedrun around 30 games, but some examples are The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past, Breath of the Wild, Super Mario Odyssey, Super Mario 64, the Portal games, Exographer, and It Takes Two with Jannylbl.

Back to Exographer: what made you want to take up that challenge?

Johann: Two things. First, the very concept of the game, with its gameplay loop, immediately showed me its speedrunning potential. The second was the opportunity to speedrun it with Zaldeeu! Zaldeeu: I had been speedrunning for 2 years when the game was released, and my father suggested I play it because he enjoyed it a lot himself. I finished Exographer at 98% and found some glitches that, combined with its physics and the lack of RNG, made it quite practical for speedrunning. Then, I checked to see if anyone was already speedrunning Exographer, and when I saw that no one was, I took the plunge. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/44899177/e791c99cb511838e8ffedf573257d36812e7d8d9.gif

How do you find glitches useful for speedrunning?

Johann: Most of the time, glitches are discovered randomly during a run. At first, it can be frustrating because you have to restart, but that’s how you learn to speedrun a game! Otherwise, glitches can also be discovered organically by exploiting a game’s mechanics. Zaldeeu: In Exographer and other games, I use Developer Mode if the creators left one, like in Ori and the Blind Forest, It Takes Two, or the Portal games. It helps to find out-of-bounds areas or trigger skips. If a game doesn’t have such tools, I try to identify the “weakest” or longest part of the game and see how I could skip it. From there, I ask for help, experiment, and hopefully, I find a skip!

What are the most useful glitches in Exographer?

Johann: A glitch with the gluonic boots that helps skip several analyses, and the helmet, which allows players to pass through certain materials. Zaldeeu: Probably the boots analysis skip, which I actually discovered on my first playthrough. In addition, there are the Shigig boson’s second analysis skip and the greenhouse skip. Those three were the most useful to save time.

Will you continue speedrunning? If so, what games?

Johann: I’m definitely not stopping now! Some people tend to quit speedrunning, but I won’t. I don’t have any new games in mind yet, but I’m considering going back to Super Mario Odyssey and Minecraft. Zaldeeu: Right now, I’m focused on other games, but I won’t leave Exographer behind. I’m still trying to find a way to skip the whole mountain phase, so you can count on me!

Conclusion

The beauty of speedrunning lies in watching players explore Exographer, track down its weak spots—whether we left them there on purpose or not—and try again and again to beat it as fast as possible. Knowing you’ve created a true challenge for players is the best reward you can get as a developer. Thanks to Johann and Zaldeeu for answering our questions. Zaldeeu streamed his speedrun on YouTube with an incredible 43 minutes and 25 seconds record—who will be the one to beat it? Addendum: Zaldeeu broke his own record with 32 minutes and 44 seconds.

It’s summer — the perfect time to load up some games on our Steam Decks and Switches. Good news: Exographer is fully verified for both devices. But what does it really take for a game to run well on small screens and modest processors? Not much, at least for a 2D game, if you've kept those limitations in mind from the start. In the end, here are the main differences between the lighter (portable) version of Exographer and the standard one. The first two relate to graphical performance, while the last focuses on user experience and interface.

The interactions between the character and its environment required sophisticated shaders involving reshaping our pixelated world via continuous graphics. In the example below, the photosphere repels the rock through a real-time animation. These shaders were simplified to run smoothly on Steam Deck and Switch. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/44899177/23ca98af4abafce863a401198e9b48314163f1b8.jpg

In the same spirit, two levels were adapted because they contain fancy animations. The spinning core of our so-called Source (middle image below) was decreasing the FPS and it was degraded. We also removed a warm mirage-like effect from our Glowing Forge, since it was slowing down the character. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/44899177/5f181189ac92e73f49e8d54240b6cbea94fec101.jpg

In Exographer, the player opens a tablet in which there is a lot of written information, see above. The display was adapted, so that the text is more readable: all the titles and tabs are larger, for instance. Moreover, we had from the very beginning a focus mode where you can look at one single enlarged element (bottom deck screen), in addition to having all of them on the same screen (top computer screen). We also had quite a cool unexpected surprise: the mouse controls were automatically ported to the touch screen on the Steam Deck, allowing us to switch from GamePad controls for the platforming part to Mouse controls for the puzzle part. Just the perfect way to play Exographer. And at the end, it was such a pleasure to play our own game on a portable device, here for the very first time, in a train… {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/44899177/2789264ed168d57b64fb5be5d5e927736f71d47a.jpg

Hi explorers. ScifunGames and Abylight Studios want to thank you for playing Exographer and your positive reviews. We are overwhelmed by the great reception of the game, and these help us to reach new players. Have you discovered the Natitan legacy yet? An exciting journey awaits. We are back to announce our second Exographer patch, with general improvements and bug fixes. Thanks for your feedback, it helps a lot with polishing, and making Exographer an even better game. We also updated our main art, to better communicate the style of gameplay: an exploration puzzle adventure, where players will be able to discover an exciting story, with characters, locations and powers based on particle physics. Please find down here every element we introduced with the latest patch:

Character

• Fixed a bug where the character animation freezes upon falling death.

World

• Initialization: Fixed a bug where the absurd matters were not the right ones, after finishing and restarting the game with the absurd matters inverted.
• General: Adjust the tablet opening based on where the character really is (temple, mirror, microscope, control room…)
• Mirror Room (level): The zinc rock clue can now be taken anytime in its three positions.
• Microscope (level): Raise some blue light intensity to be more visible.
• Antichamber (level): Fixed a bug where the library button could be blocked by teleporting during animation.
• Academy (level): Ladder to microscope now stays deployed if powered.
• Academy (level): Large zoom out now only triggers when interacting with the bench.
• Cosmic (level): Fix the absurd matter exchange in the hidden zone.
• Cosmic (level): Fixed a bug where the door leading to the charm cave was not activated anymore if the player teleported during animation.
• Yurt (level): Fixed a bug where opening the tablet while jumping in a particular place was leading to a black screen.
• Charm cave (level): Fixed a bug where opening the tablet in the secret area led to a black screen.
• Charm cave (level): Fix a sprite of a broken magnet.
• Strange yurt (level): Align the inside door position with the outside.
• Scintillating (level): Replace a visual water effect.
• Muonic Sanctuary (level): The door to the secret level can now be triggered freely and the ladder is always deployed.
• Muonic Sanctuary (level): The rosette lock can be reused after its first use to open and close the door.
• Control room (level): Fixed a bug where the automatic doors were not reacting well while taking pictures.
• Control room (level): Added a Wedic dispenser for better quality of life.
• Emulsive (level): Remove a random smoke.
• Wedic station (level): Fixed a bug where the wheel could not be turned if player teleported during animation.
• Lonely (level): Fixed a bug where you could send multiple Tungsten bars at the same time.
• Lonely (level): Fixed a bug where the tracks were not displayed anymore after replacing the good tungsten bar.

Analyses

• Unlocking the antipixule in the rosette can now trigger the ending scene.
• Fixed a bug where the arrows are moving while using the chronogram and the antigram
• Media and chronograms: Remove two rays to make the tutorials clearer.
• Tutorial analysis - Fix a bug where the card is already selected
• Cards and points of interest can be associated based on a larger overlap zone
• Locked cards in the easy analysis mode are now trackable. Route - Now displayed on already correct cards in easy mode
• W Station: fixed the track sizes at the entry zoom level.

User interface improvements

• Large clue display: Hide arrows if it’s impossible to go next or previous.
• Large clue display: Justify text to the left.
• Rosette display: Handling the Shgig boson encrypted texts.
• Page display: Allowing to go to the next or previous pages when the current page is not yet found.
• Navigation: Fixing the pre-selection on Dpad.
• Larger button outlines on popup, main menu and pause menu.
• Tablet: Change the close icon, not to mistake it with X.
• Banner: Fixed a bug where the level banner displayed an encrypted version of the already discovered level.

Follow Abylight Studios on Steam (https://store.steampowered.com/publisher/Abylight) to get the latest news on our games, sales, bundles discounts and new releases.

Exographer is primarily focused on its gameplay mechanics (see devlog #6), and its storyline emerged after all the design was essentially complete. Most of the text is used to solve puzzles, and it is revealed through the pages of a notebook to be decoded. To contextualize the information, each notebook entry is signed and dated by initially-mysterious characters... {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/44899177/1dc4f36e24e4642721504e86cf2f880509514c6c.png In Exographer, the main character walks in the footsteps of nine academicians, rediscovering their discoveries and understanding why they disappeared. There are thus two stories: the one the character is living, and the one the academicians lived in the past. We've already covered this second storyline, based on the real history of science, in our devlog #4. To visualize our character's typical journey through the academician world, as well as the flow of information the player receives, we used two interactive, non-linear storytelling tools. The first, Twine, is an open-source tool that lets you create such stories, like books in which you are the hero. A first version of our Exographer's story was conceived and proposed to the team by our narrative designer, Raphaël Granier de Cassagnac. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/44899177/5e94456e4d4aea1f59605e2a0299c1663253f5ab.png We soon realized that this wouldn't be enough. While most of the notebook's pages focus on puzzles and include local clues, nine special pages require you to search for clues all over the world. Both for the players and the team could be confused by this apparent complexity! To visualize this scattered information, we used a second piece of software, ArcWeave, which, in addition to preserving the possible routes for the player, enabled us to add illustrations, lists of objects (pages, clues, academics...) and link them together. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/44899177/4db33d8848cfe1400775861c76307f6861b94379.png If our players had access to our ArcWeave, they could easily answer the questions some of them have when platinizing the game, for example on Steam:

• Where to find Rofur and Tosom's codes for the emulsive zone?
• Where are Rucie’s, Shgig’s and Dirca's final clues hidden?

But you better try to find them by yourself, it’s not that difficult.

Hi explorers. ScifunGames and Abylight Studios want to thank you for playing Exographer and your positive reviews. Have you discovered the Natitan legacy yet? An exciting journey awaits. We are back to announce our latest Exographer patch, version number 56, with general improvements and bug fixes. Thanks for your feedback, it helps a lot with polishing, and making Exographer an even better game. Please find down here every element we introduced with the latest patch:

Character

• Fixed a bug where the player’s animation is frozen after loading a picture upon a death event.

World

• Initialization: Fixed a bug where the absurd matters are not the right ones, after finishing the game with the absurd matters inverted, and then start a new game right away. Source Antichamber (level): Added an absurd fog line to climb back if the player is aiming to complete its map.
• Yurt (level): Fixed a bug where you cannot go up again if you reach the top and load the green fire picture.
• Glowing Forge (zone): Enhance graphic visibility of platforms.
• Greenhouse (level): Added a reset button for the whole line.
• Zediacal Workshop (level): Fixed a bug where you leave the area with the glove unlocked, but not picked, resulting in being stuck in front of an absurd mud on your wayback.
• Wedic Station (level): Fixed an arrow in the analysis so that the card matches the picture.
• Last Flooded Depth area: Added some insights and hints to help the player find the secret door entry.
• Shattered Borders (zone): The thunder rhythm is now saved inside the last snap the player takes.
• Waber’s Ascent (level): Fixed a bug where the automatic elevators are not reacting to the thunder anymore.
• Lonely Experiment (level): Fixed a bug where the Tungsten bars line is locked when teleporting to a picture of this very level.

UI

• Popup: Place the reticle on the first of the two buttons on a popup display.

Localization

• Chinese: Fixed two wrong Natitan names.

Achievements

• Go high: include the falling part of the jump to be valid and unlock the achievement.

We are continuously working on enhancing the experience of playing Exographer. Remember to report anything you find through your gameplays, and we will fix it in upcoming patches. Thank you, again. This improvements and fixes are also available for Exographer on other platforms: Xbox, PS5, Epic Games and Nintendo Switch.

In Exographer, two types of character were to be distinguished: the Natitans, repositories of knowledge and inspired by real scientists who discovered elementary particles (see devlog #4), and Ini, the player character, an exographer sent to investigate a mysterious distress signal emitted by the Natitans. Ini's design had to be completely different from that of the Natitans. It was quickly decided that he would be smaller than them, and therefore evolve in a world too big for him. This is both a metaphor for our limit-conscious scientific knowledge, and a reference to the titanic machines built by scientists today, for example at CERN (see devlog #1). {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/44899177/0db48c614dea638cb35182de5e0cb893b6cedcd1.jpg In our early versions, Ini would look like a robot, or even an exploration probe sent to analyze the distress signal and explore an abandoned world. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/44899177/56216bb3f2b794220ca4850a63adadb270ae688d.jpg In the end, we opted for a biological character, a sort of repairman or astronaut, to give the player a stronger sense of identification with the character... New graphic explorations took shape. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/44899177/5706fd5905d70d4e8fd7c3c88f9b89f211fb00c4.jpg One constraint was that the design had to remain fairly simple, since Ini obtains equipment as it goes along, which had to be represented and animated in pixel art, a considerable challenge. Another constraint was that we wanted the character to be gender-neutral. On this point, we're disappointed with the result. For us, Ini could be anyone behind his helmet, but we've noticed that many players are convinced that he's a boy, in keeping with the stereotype of the astronaut profession? We'll do better next time! In the case of the Natitans, we wanted to convey the idea of a highly advanced civilization, ancient enough to have accumulated a wealth of scientific knowledge. Our graphic designer Thomas Vaulbert took inspiration from very ancient animal species, such as arthropods, which have existed since the Precambrian period. The first concepts were based on this idea. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/44899177/24b3ead0ba5a737de08b872fcf6da962e5972533.jpg But as Exographer production progressed, we felt the need to diversify the look of the Natitans, to better characterize them. So we decided to take inspiration from more recent species, such as a gorilla or an elephant, for the youngest Natitans, in a kind of mini theory of evolution. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/44899177/ab657e740a7b23f1f35c7f077804ee35de9f9d7d.jpg

Exographer’s music was scored by Yann van der Cruyssen, author of the Stray and Seasons after Fall soundtracks, among others. Yann confesses that producing a soundtrack for a game with retro graphics is always a tricky business. The sound has to be neither too old school nor too modern. In fact, this isn't the first time Yann has worked on this kind of game. Over the years, he has accumulated a number of tools to meet this goal. For Exographer, he used a mixture of FM synthesizers, emulations of old machines, wavetables from retro games and, sometimes, more HiFi samples passed through effects to degrade them. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/44899177/065d86208d4ccf6330fb17003e61557b4eb90122.png Yann's sequencer, hard at work. Among the 22 tracks produced, there are several recurring themes or patterns: Yann first wrote the main theme, The Natitan Academy, with its chorus that worked very well on piano but took a long time to adapt in retro mode. This was the basis for the rest, with the same synths, and bits of melody taken up here and there. Yann's favorite theme wasn't the easiest to produce: Cathode Rays was initially composed in a rather static way, with an organ echoing the level, reminiscent of a church. It didn't work, and the track was almost thrown away. Until Yann replaced the organ with a more rhythmic LoFi pattern. Finally, after a few tweaks, its five-beat melody became the game's most recurrent leitmotif. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/44899177/1d31b7fb9f2da6176ffca1aae5d9fb5877c8f86e.jpg The Natitan Academy track is played in the game's largest level, a village and its mausoleum. Another track that was almost thrown away was Gelma's prayer. On receiving it, the team was dubious. What place would this quasi-medieval track have in our universe? But Yann didn't give up, and it wasn't until the track was mounted in the game that everyone embraced it. Composing music for a game with a wide range of moods is never easy. The specificities of each level must leave their mark: flutes and percussion in the cosmic mount, glass sounds for the underwater levels, unstable harmonies in the absurd world, electrical artifacts for the most technological moments. A final subtlety: several tracks have been exported in separate layers to vary the intensity according to what's going on in the game. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/44899177/9d8d22531c9aa80b349d9f883b78a39a13b5b872.jpg Overall, Yann tried to produce a quiet universe for Exographer, because despite the platformer aspect, it's more a game about reflection. Fun fact: one of the 22 tracks produced didn't make it into the game. Can you find out which one?

We have good news for all those users of Valve's handheld consoles, Steam Deck or Steam Deck OLED, who want to play Exographer. This 2D exploration adventure game is fully compatible with the Steam device. Enjoy Ini's adventure on an alien planet and discover all the secrets that this science-inspired metroidvania holds on the go, with all the original game's features, controls, text and resolution adapted. Exographer has a 2D gameplay, full of puzzles and platforms, with pixel art graphics and an evocative soundtrack composed by Yann Van der Cruyssen (Stray). The powers we get, the characters we meet, the locations throughout 6 atmospheres and more than 20 levels and the particles we must discover are based on particle physics. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/44899177/50d1c9f58b2030dc6fd2bfaee87c6768391b2c68.jpg Why is Exographer not yet listed as verified for Steam Deck? At the moment, the SciFunGames title only appears on Steam listed as compatible. However, the game is fully optimized for the handheld console. This means that all controls have been adapted, the screen resolution is perfect for the game, and the texts have been revised to improve readability, both on the regular model and on Steam Deck OLED. Valve is verifying games for Steam Deck progressively, and we cannot be sure when it will be Exographer's turn. However, we can guarantee a 100% compatible and optimized experience on this machine. And let us add that enjoying this exploration adventure anywhere is a plus. If you do not own a Steam Deck, you can also enjoy Exographer in portable mode on the Nintendo Switch version. Remember that the game launches next September 26 and you can already add it to your wishlist, and enjoy the free demo.

In Exographer, you'll spend a (small) part of your time searching for new elementary particles in images closely resembling those manipulated by physicists at CERN or elsewhere. And you don't even need any prior knowledge! The game is designed to help you gradually get to grips with these seemingly complex concepts. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/44899177/657bf53d3a8ac2f99c875cc961a5612d5dd0e7b9.jpg In the example above, a cosmic ray cascade, you'll need to find a muon and an antimuon, thanks to the chain of decay of the pion into a muon and then an electron. But you'll just have to let the visual aspect guide you, and to use your selection tools, in order to achieve this. To design these puzzles, our scientific director, Raphaël Granier de Cassagnac, took direct inspiration from the history of particle physics. In fact, muons were first observed in cosmic rays, and this came as quite a surprise. Other experiments, such as the discovery of the neutrino by Reines and Cowan, are hidden behind most of the levels. To design the various analyses, game designer Pierre-Alban Ferrer drew on this history and came up with tools for selecting different properties of the particles and their interactions. Together with Raphaël, they exchanged diagrams such as the one below, before implementing these puzzles and testing them on novice players to check progress and learning. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/44899177/8f3fe734b770a8f53f5ec32494dad08a37bb3082.jpg At the end of the game, the player finally discovers the Higgs boson, by solving the four decay modes that led to its discovery. Above, the Higgs boson decays into four leptons, via a pair of Z bosons. It's up to you to find all these particles! Bonus! While we were designing the game, our intern Basile de Lamberterie designed a stand-alone application that lets you make a few collisions, disintegrate a few particles, and contemplate cosmic rays. This generator was very useful for visualizing interactions. On the other hand, the idea of procedural interaction generation had to be abandoned in favor of total control over the complexity offered to players. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/44899177/9b3eb01b7c8d78ed347b9659299f122ef5cfd16f.jpg

To repair the giant machines of the Exographer world, you'll have to solve puzzles. To design them, our game designer Pierre-Alban Ferrer had to meet various design objectives: simple or advanced learning of a power (see devlog #3), checking players' skills, using the camera, illustrating mechanics specific to science… Puzzles based on ray redirection, for example, meet the latter two objectives. The first (scientific) inspiration are the electromagnets of particle accelerators such as the Large Hadron Collider at CERN. These are used to bend particle tracks as they travel through the tunnels to serve various experiments. In play, this curvature is greatly exaggerated to allow right-angle redirections and beam separations. This brings us close to some of the puzzles in Half Life: Alyx. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/44899177/81644a381236b3df9c5bbeddea889e11cd9bb1f0.jpg LHC superconducting magnets (Image: CERN) These puzzles also require the use of a camera: electric rays are not visible unless photographed. This again echoes science, and adds a little memorization challenge. Finally, we've added a little difficulty by blurring these beams with one of our absurd materials. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/44899177/5bc801d1c13c9cc1271f616a71e96eb5b75f850b.jpg Other puzzles focus more on learning the mechanics of the game. The "code lock" type puzzles, inspired by escape games, require a good understanding of the character's movements in order to explore the levels and collect clues by taking pictures. Another learning puzzle: in the muon sanctuary inspired by the Kamiokande mine (see devlog #1), the character must pass "light bulbs" to "turn them back on" and restart the machine. This mechanism, very similar to Mario's gold coins or Sonic's rings, allows us to show the way, but also to make massive use of a newly acquired power (the zediacal boxes), combining them with other powers. The challenge is: how do you deploy this box in the right direction to reach this precise point in the level? {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/44899177/eb7a7701e6e8e9fba0672e08e5db040eeb2670db.jpg Other puzzles will test the handling skill of the acquired powers. Such is the case with the time-limited passages. By adding the time constraint, we're calling on reflexes rather than thinking, ensuring that Ini is capable of meeting the challenges ahead. Exographer has a number of other surprises in its gameplay mechanics, which will put your thinking skills to the test. For example, where did InI get lost on his ascent of Cosmic Mountain? {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/44899177/0b5f20d9a3b3336641ecd80675f3a55e7ed1c176.png

In Exographer, your enemies are four materials with strange properties. One of our challenges was to represent these so-called "absurd" materials. Inherent to the gameplay, they block progress, and some are even deadly! Progressive mastery of the powers (see Devlog #3) enables you to overcome them. To ensure that they conveyed the right visual message, our graphic designer Thomas Vaulbert had to go through several iterations, striking a balance between "beware, I'm potentially lethal" and "don't hesitate to use me if you want to continue exploring the level". {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/44899177/647858949687158da7fa016e220e77be2dbc036a.jpg Graphic research to represent absurd materials The first constraint was that they had to stand out against the backgrounds, whatever zone the player was in. To ensure a strong contrast with the backgrounds, Thomas opted for materials containing a lot of dark gray or black. The second constraint was to use a light, bright color to emphasize the interactive nature of our absurd materials. Initially, we opted for red, fuchsia or violet tones, but these turned out to have too "dangerous" a connotation, whereas we wanted the players to be encouraged to use them. To ensure maximum strangeness across all levels, and following feedback from players during playtests, we decided to go for yellow and gold tones... {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/44899177/0e446d07d0b5dfc358d70114f1d9af789b828aa2.pngThe 4 absurd materials in red and yellow. The most complex was the action of the photon sphere on the rock, a kind of brick amalgam. The gameplay called for the sphere to repel this material. In other words, the same amount of matter, but it would contract and recombine. The primary inspiration was the scene where Hagrid reveals the passageway to Diagon Alley in the first Harry Potter film. The shader coded by our technical artist Léonard Allain-Launay creates a disc which, thanks to UV manipulation (2D projection of a 3D element) and posterization, produces a higher density of bricks around the player. For the tar, we chose to make the material liquid and organic by having it move slowly and vertically by one pixel. Then we added bubbles, and snapping effects as the player moves in and out of the material. It sticks! So much so that when the photosphere is activated, the sludge sticks to the character like magnetic iron filings! {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/44899177/47f9efbb14d1d9d64f4ce8f8f65e6f41eb78da30.gif

In Exographer, you follow in the footsteps of nine enigmatic academics from a forgotten civilisation. These ‘Natitans’ once built colossal machines to discover the inner structure of matter... But they all seem to have disappeared, leaving a kind of testament behind. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/44899177/ae862da5a07cb1c39e494f21457ebae4aecb53df.png Like absolutely everything else in the game, these characters are directly inspired by science. In this case by real scientists, whose names have been changed. Our Dirca above is a reference to Paul Dirac, feminized for the occasion. Among the hundred or so physicists who helped establish particle physics, we had to make a difficult choice. Our scientific director, Raphael Granier de Cassagnac, has chosen the nine shown below, but 81 names are mentioned somewhere in the game, as a discreet tribute to all the others. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/44899177/59c58f99ffc119506d94c6d30281d7064f70caa7.jpg Above: Concept art of Liaup, Waber, Shgig, Dirca, Gelma, Fenma, Rucie, Rofur and Tosom. Can you find out who they match? Another tribute is paid to science through the Natitans' timeline. Spanning more than 220 years, their discoveries are not randomly dated. Each entry in their logbook corresponds to a real event in scientific life, simply shifted, with the Natitans' year zero corresponding to the discovery of the Higgs boson. So if it took 30 years to build a machine and make a discovery in our world, the same applies to the vanished civilisation that our Exographer is investigating. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/44899177/0b79d49c6c67ba4ab9974543da09f9b180fd7536.png Above: 15 of the 100+ dates used in the game. All this is a bit hidden behind the scenes, but we hope it will trigger interest for real science in a decent proportion of our players.

Watch developers play Exographer, an exploration adventure based on science with beautiful pixel art. Steam Next Fest demo includes the first levels of the game; arriving to an alien planet, discovering new particle physics based powers and solving puzzles to access new areas. Wishlist Exographer now on Steam. Coming 2024. https://store.steampowered.com/app/2834320/Exographer/

Watch developers play Exographer, an exploration adventure based on science with beautiful pixel art. Steam Next Fest demo includes the first levels of the game; arriving to an alien planet, discovering new particle physics based powers and solving puzzles to access new areas. Wishlist Exographer now on Steam. Coming 2024. https://store.steampowered.com/app/2834320/Exographer/

In Exographer, the character acquires powers that are directly inspired by the interactions between elementary particles. This key element of the game is also a major design challenge, which can be summed up as follows: How do you create a fun experience while staying true to the science? The first step was to gather as much information and content as possible, in this case relating to particle physics. Then the team came up with ideas, tons of ideas, trying to imagine different powers and their interactions. For example: what if we made the character stick to quark ceilings using gluonic boots? Then came the inevitable step at this stage of the design process: prototyping... on paper! {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/44899177/7216934262b0b1fc369ed14a38477f8ecd796a8b.png Through prototypes like these, game designer Pierre-Alban Ferrer has been able to test numerous concepts with the whole team. Is it fun? Does it correspond to the type of challenge we're looking for? Is it true to science? The answers to these questions allow us to adjust the prototypes, or to change them radically if necessary, until the right formula is found. In short: the game designer iterates, which is fundamental to the design phase! After paper came digital prototyping. Provisional levels were created, known as ‘gyms’. Their graphics are basic, but they can be used to test a wide range of configurations. There, the principles of how the powers interact with each other and with the world are put to the test. It also allowed us to uncover cases of interaction that we hadn't imagined. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/44899177/af020fce0238f9b2b0fe07663e253d825b28c396.png This is followed by a fine-tuning phase, during which the interactions are adjusted to ensure a smooth and pleasant experience. For example, for the gluonic boots that allow you to walk on certain walls and ceilings, it's important to anticipate direction changes. A golden rule: players don't need extremely precise timing! The aim is to reinforce the impression of control and limit the feeling of injustice. During this phase, we cluttered our screens with numerous debug variables, to visualize the parameters and adjust them as best we could. In the example below, the red square represents the zone in which a change of angle is anticipated. If users press the ‘down’ direction here, the character changes direction and starts to move down the wall. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/44899177/5116c5bd4fac14198a58f350d8c9891cefbbe7c3.png Finally, armed with all this experimentation and fine-tuning, we can build the levels, adjust the visual details of the powers, as well as the signs and feedback we provide to the players. And here's the result, in this example where three powers are combined: {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/44899177/872284cd3a427dbb2609baa5b547e53f5af6296e.gif

In Exographer, taking pictures reveals many clues and you can do it in any situation. That includes in the middle of an animation or while using a power, or when you’re on a moving in mid-air or in an elevator. You can take as many pictures as you like, and the last picture you took is your save point. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/44899177/30439c944d5bccdc79177b60c7bf1858ab2c05e9.jpg That led to two technical challenges. The first one is about recording and restoring fidelity. Our developer, Tony Cottrel, had to make sure that everything you see on the image you capture is actually what you are going to get the moment you load back the picture. That implies recording the states of not just the player’s progression, motion, and activated powers; but also the states of puzzles, props animations, moving objects, and even some audio configurations! Of course, he also had to keep track of world elements that are located outside of the frame canvas, such as other puzzles you have beaten, and paths you have opened in the past, as in any regular save system. So that “taking a picture” is far from just “storing a jpg file”. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/44899177/a835688691fe6e293abc4208c6b3e109ef81653d.jpg The second challenge is time. When you take a picture in Exographer, you have a designed freeze of 200 milliseconds to give the sensation of “Say Cheese!” to the player. That is also the time budget we had to fill heavy task executions. First of all, the recording of the whole world listed above, and then the recording of the main camera itself, plus a couple of special effect cameras. On top of that, you add up all the feedback effects that occur when you take a picture. To beat this challenge, we choose to optimize some tasks, delay others, such as the serialization of files. The result for the player is that you can shoot many pictures in a row without noticing the processes happening in the backstages. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/44899177/4acbada930182601b745e9d39e16b606f38fc549.jpg Will I fall down in the mud there if I load this back? No you won’t, says Tony.

In Exographer, the player's progress is punctuated by the discovery of elementary particles. Most of Exographer's levels are graphically inspired by the actual scientific locations where these particles were discovered. We thought this was all the more appropriate given that these places are often gigantic, marvelous and photogenic. These include, among others:

• Particle colliders that are several kilometers long;
• Cosmic ray observatories that lies in deserts;
• Underground caverns that only neutrinos can reach...

In the very first level, the character even walks around in an old-fashioned television, because it was in this kind of cathode ray tube that the electron was discovered. The overall game's artistic direction was set on this first level. Several archaeo-scientific options were explored, and the most realistic was chosen (bottom right below). {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/44899177/35e75cb5fd62bb42958146e0c0d2fa9ea4f95026.png Before tackling a new level, our graphic designer Thomas Vaulbert builds up a moodboard of past, present and future experiments that are related to the particle being discovered. He also talks to the physicists who work in these fascinating laboratories - it's even said that he visited CERN with the whole Exographer team at the start of the project… Armed with all these images, he composes them into his own unique pixel art style. Some places really do resemble a specific location, like the neutrino pool at the Kamiokande mine in Japan (see below). Others are mixtures, extrapolations and interpretations. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/44899177/ecd5ca8673950bb455b9f3676f6b410ea7d97b43.jpg {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/44899177/794831da9d035975a5d8052f8adcb61d99b7084e.jpg At the end, there will be more than 20 levels, all packed with references to real places.