A detective demo inspired by Geoguessr

Okay, so you have probably played Geoguessr.

Or you've seen this guy play Geoguessr on YouTube.

It's the game where you're dropped onto some 
random point on Earth and get to look around,

from street level, through the 
eyes of a Google Street View car.

Then you've got to figure out where the heck 
you are and place your guess on the world map.

The closer you are, the higher you score.

Oh god damnit.

Okay, so if you actually want to know where you 
are, you're going to need to look for clues.

Like - are the cars driving on 
the right hand side of the road,

or the left? Is the sun in the north or the south?

What do the houses look like? The street signs? 
Bollards? Road markings? Electricity poles?

Perhaps you can find some text - what 
language is that? Can you spot a domain

name? A phone number? Ring them up, 
ask where they are! No, don't do that.

Why would you do that, that's so weird.

Anyway - getting good at Geoguessr 
almost feels like being a detective.

You need to hunt down clues 
and make logical deductions.

And you get to have those 
eureka-style "aha!" moments.

And the part where you submit your guess...

and then get told if you were right or wrong - is,

well, it's pretty similar to pointing 
out a killer in a murder mystery game.

And so that was the idea behind Locator 
- an ingenious upcoming game that turns

Geoguessr into a sci-fi detective story.

Oh, this is Weekender by the way.

My semi-frequent series where I recommend an

interesting indie game for 
you to play this weekend.

And I guess also demos, now? Eh, why not!

Okay - so the game is about Abigail Lidari, 
an archeologist who has touched down on a

strange alien planet... and has now gone missing.

All you've got to go on is a 
journal, a map of the planet,

and a collection of photographs that 
Abigail snapped along her journey.

And so you've got to carefully study these 
snaps and look for clues that might help

you pinpoint the archeologist's 
location when she took the photo.

Things start out easy enough.

You've got three photos of the crash site,

with prominent images of landmarks 
like a tree and an obelisk.

And so by triangulating their position you can 
reverse engineer the location of the camera.

Just like Geoguessr, you plop 
your guess on the map with a pin.

But unlike the addictive web game you 
won't get an immediate response or a score.

Instead the game takes obvious 
influence from Return of the Obra

Dinn - and will only confirm your pins 
when you put in three correct answers.

It's a nice way to cut down 
on brute force guesswork.

But from there, things get more complicated.

You'll soon find photos that can't be 
decoded simply by looking at the map.

Perhaps because they are indoors.

Or because they feature generic landmarks that are

repeated multiple times - 
like these huts on stilts.

So to solve those, you'll need to cross 
reference the information in Abigail's journal.

This thing is packed with info 
on stuff like constellations,

sailing routes, diagrams, and ways to work 
out your heading, latitude, or longitude.

You'll need to do maths and 
astronomy and process of elimination.

In this way, it brings in the sort of deduction 
gameplay seen in other excellent detective games

like last year's Rise of the Golden Idol and the 
very recently-released The Roottrees are Dead...

which probably deserves a 
Weekender episode of its own.

It's very good.

Anyway - I don't want to 
spoil any specific puzzles.

But suffice to say, even this hour-long demo 
was packed with moments of frantic note-taking,

puzzle solving, and exciting 
moments where I felt like a genius.

I also dug the general vibe of the game.

I spoke to developer Empty Exhibit Games 
who said that the alien planets were

largely inspired by Myst and Riven - they 
said "I was captivated by Myst as a child,

I loved discovering the strange structures 
and mechanical devices of that world.

I did my best to capture some of that same magic

as I've been creating landmarks 
and structures for this game."

And while the plot is barebones 
- that's for a reason.

Early versions of the game packed 
the journal with diary pages which

were meant to explore Abigail's 
character and her emotional journey.

But playtesters just weren't interested 
in these and found them to be an annoying

distraction from the pages that 
actually helped you solve the puzzles

So the developer took inspiration from 
Outer Wilds - another alien archeology

game, but one where the narrative and the 
puzzles are always perfectly intermingled.

Almost every scrap of text is both 
telling a story and giving you clues.

And so in Locator, the photo captions and 
journal pages are primarily for puzzle solving..

but they also give you an insight on how 
Abigail felt when exploring the island.

Anyway - that's enough from me.

The Locator demo is available 
on Steam, right now, for free.

Make sure you Wishlist the game if 
you're interested in playing more.

But whatever the case I'll be sure to let 
you know when the full thing comes out.

Whenever that might be.

And if you're after more detective goodness 
- click the end screen right now to learn

about Chants of Sennaar - this one's 
about deciphering ancient languages.