Another Night at the Archive
You are the new hire for the night shift at the dingy old archive in your city. But it turns out that there is information stored here that you can find nowhere else. So every couple of nights, you get a call by some weirdo government agent or private ghost hunter to find some very specific information for some very specific and weird questions they have.
Using the old card catalog, you look up names, cities, buildings and events to slowly piece together mysterious and horrifying tales of weirdness by looking at various newspaper clippings, old flyers, book pages, webpage print-outs and more, all stored in this archive, while the wind outside is howling and the old lightbulbs flicker.
ALTHOUGH YOU CAN PLAY IT ONLINE, I STILL RECOMMEND STRONGLY THAT YOU DOWNLOAD THE GAME.
SOME UNFIXABLE BUGS ONLY OCCUR IN THE BROWSER VERSION.
Heavily inspired by games such as “Return of the Obra-Dinn” or “The Roottrees are Dead”.
Jumpscares: No. Only a somewhat creepy atmosphere
Language: English
Duration: 60 min
Controls: Mouse & Keyboard
| Status | Prototype |
| Platforms | HTML5, Windows |
| Rating | Rated 4.7 out of 5 stars (165 total ratings) |
| Author | KorbohneD |
| Genre | Puzzle, Adventure |
| Made with | GameMaker |
| Tags | Atmospheric, complex-story, Creepy, Detective, Mystery, Noir, note-taking, obra-dinn, Point & Click |
| Content | No generative AI was used |




Comments
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I am guessing I can't play this game on browser? when it loaded all I see it multiple black rectangles on my screen, nothing else
I loved it so much, and I really need more! 10/10
I love to take notes, it is so much fun! Finding out the cameras was the most difficult part, but tbh I just needed to read the documents more carefully.
I really hope to play the long version of the game with different stories or requests to do.
it took me a while but i finally finished it, i'd say the cameras were probably the hardest part and i must admit i sorta just guessed those untill i got it right. other then that this game was fun and awsome, 9/of 10 (:
best of luck on any future projects, may i ask if you plan to ever re-visit this setting/system?
this game is amazing! but I just wish that the instructions on how to play were more clear and emphasized since I didnt know you could search up any of the files so I played the whole game looking at every individual file and answered the request terribly 😓
I see that you are making a full game, but if you would ever consider adding just the smallest amount of UI to this, I would love a way to completely delete everything I've written on the message without having to go and do it manually while desperately trying (and failing) not to look at the half completed answers I've filled out previously.
Love the game but replayability suffers because of this.
Absolutely love this game! Love searching and piecing together the spooky evidence.
I did a LOT of notetaking. I'd love to see a note taking facility in the game.
This one took me MONTHS to finally get through, since the music keeps me so on-edge and the file system took more frantic, random sifting from me than intentional name searches (my current scroll wheel is broken, so it took more effort to look through all the documents than necessary). I finally got into the flow of it and managed to finish it in less than 3 hours.
Unfortunately, every reasonable camera combination I tried was either "several" or "few" errors. Even after looking up a successful YouTube playthrough where ONE of the combinations I used was correct -- it still says a "few" errors! I'm not sure if it's the difference between browser and download versions.
help! i tried to play, and after getting a few peices of info, the game would not let me get specific info cards. i tried getting the one under "Ad" but the numbers kept changing and the system would not let me put it in. am i doing something wrong, i speculated that it was because there was too many things on my desk, but i dunno. also, how in the world do you find out where the hobos friend lives. because no matter how much i look, i cant seem to find it, thank you.
in case you didnt know it asked where he worked, not where he lived, its just in the file of his name. Idk which specific one tho since I havent played the game in a while
Fantastic game! I loved figuring out this mystery. (although I still wonder what exactly happened!) I ended up making a spreadsheet to organize all my findings and the camera timelines. Would love to see more of this game and I'm excited to see this expanded on.
Im confused how to even start. I looked up all 3 key words in the initial letter. What next? nothing unlocked and I have no new leads
youre supposed to look for any 3 set of numbers in the files that have them, then look it up so you get additional info
Shout out to KorbohneD, please answer!
Does there exist anywhere an uncensored version of "that one heavily censored document" and if so, how could one possibly get there hands on it?
For anyone who thinks they might have missed something, there is a total of eight WORKING location codes.
The unrelated codes (which I did not count) do not work and, in fact, change every time you close the drawer.
This is only for the codes, there is other information in the cataloge that leads somewhere useful.
For an extremely basic example:
Ernst Kreutz Did you mean: 'Kreutz, Ernst'? People are catologed by surnames not first names!
Hi ! The game is really cool, i figured out most of the info (the camera was the one i did NOT find) but i still loved having to search and discovering the story :)
i did it :)
very fun, decently long too
interesting lore as ell, very excited to see where this goes next.
I remember playing this game about a year ago and it was great! However, it was not finished. Is it now?
i played the game in one sitting, had a great time 9.5/10!
i think the camara identification should get a retry, because i somehow managed to "guess" it (calculated guess, elimination) but never 100% sure.
in the end, it drove me crazy, because i thought i got the camaras wrong, or something else wrong; when actually the only thing i was sure i was right about, the street name, was a mistype, i dropped an "n", lmao.
also a suggestion: this game feels like a great escape room (i felt like i was actually a detective/researcher, would play other stories like that) - i can see myself playing this with friends on two screens, one for the index archive, and one with the table/item archive, maybe there's a way to implement/integrate this into the game.
also, i would love for it to be an option to download a file for print and play physically.
bug: the game reacts too slow to typed input - writing the code into the archive machine, if i typed too fast, it wrote the second key twice (i.e. typed 13 fast, the machine wrote 33). i guess that's the reason i dropped an "n".
I liked this game! Simple in style and gameplay but challenging and engaging. Havent completed it 100% yet, still figuring out the cams. Though if I had to share any critique it would definitely be q.o.l improvements. The lack of tutorial/introduction makes it a bit hard to get into playing the game the first few minutes. Also be nice to have an "archive" to hold files that you arent actively using so you dont have to go back and forth to the catalogue. Besides that, its not bad, I enjoyed finding scattered information, very rewarding to put the pieces together :)
not really playable on the web bc it jsut crop half the screen sadly :(
Once you start the game, zoom out or scroll left until you see the button for fullscreen <3
Does anyone have any hints on how I can find the time for the Swantal incident? I've got it pegged for sometime in between 21:09 and 22:25
look at the medical report that you get after looking up the "Overstatter Drinknight" in the archives :)
Loved the reference to Dave the Diver in the Di file. This game could be packed full of references that I'll likely never find, and I love that.
OMG! I really enjoyed this game even when english is not my native language, but I understood the story behind the complex situation. I really wanna play more to discover all the other details for the rest of the story. Thanksssss
Can't play without a mouse as this game requires the zoom in function to read the newspaper clippings, seemed promising but I'm sadly unable to play.
Review of Another Night at the Archives:
Gameplay [3/5] Gameplay is minimalistic but effective. The way in which information is discovered and dispersed is equal measures challenging and rewarding; the biggest issue I had was how surface-level the connections were. You did not need much deductive reasoning to complete the vast majority of the puzzles, and the one you DO need is extremely difficult and frustrating.
Performance [4/5] The game runs great! No obvious issues. I do feel as though the file cabinet could be a little more economic with its space. If two drawers share a beginning letter and contain no files, they should probably be merged to make things more evenly distributed. Controls to quickly flip through the files would also be a huge improvement.
Writing [5/5] Documents presented feel real and grounded in the setting. It can be hard for 'found footage' or 'unfiction' type works to capture the tone of the medium they're using--newspapers, police reports, etc--but this game nails it.
Aesthetic [3/5] The actual environment is very simplistic and does not lend itself well to setting an atmosphere. However the quality of the evidence's composition makes up for it. Everything BESIDES the archive *looks* like it's supposed to, and that's great.
Entertainment [4/5] I was super invested for most of my time playing, but I did experience some diminishing returns towards the end. The game never fully lost me though and I still thoroughly enjoyed my time with it.
Score: 3.8 [B]
The game is really fun! I wish there was a way to turn of screen jitter (or whatever it is called when the screen moves when I move my mouse) I found it really distracting and made it difficult to play, to be honest
This. was. AMAZING! My friends and I all got out notepads and sat down going over everything. Truly phenomenal work, I can't wait for the full release! <3
Also took me back to when I read about the flooding in HS.
I'm stuck. I know everything except the trail camera order, and I have all the camera reports but most of them don't have the numbers of the cameras listed and the map isn't helpful in narrowing down which ones are which. How do I figure out the order?
You can figure out the camera locations from the visual features described in the reports: Match the field of view on the map to the roads, trails and landslide area visible to the camera.
I love this type of game I loved this great effort with all the art and the maps and the all of it so well done
Absolutelly loved this game! I went trough everything and investigated myself what happened and it's a crazy story (crazy in a good way)
spoiler ahead below!!
I still can't believe that the only guy who found out about everything G.a.c.a was doing died while trying to save the town. RIP Ernst
Great game with a very huge potential! Could not help myself but read every entry in the archive.
PS. RIP to the guy who tried to save the town
HELP, HOW DO I ZOOM IN??
late but scroll the mouse wheel
Thanks, bro. No time is too late until it is.
This was so much fun. My coworker and I got so distracted trying to put the story together we kept forgetting we are only the archivists. She is an actual archivist so it made it even more fun. I really want to know the whole story though!
Every time I open one of the files with the six numbers, the numbers change and I can't put them into the machine. i don't know what to do
try looking for a number of a file you actually need.
Enjoyed the game, can see the influence of Obra Dinn clearly, great job!
One thing, maybe think about changing the format of XX/XX/XX thing in the full version? Looks too much like a regular date and I spent too much time trying to understand what to do in the beginning. Had to look it up in the comments.
Great game anyways!
Thanks for your comment! The code format will definitely be changed! : )
Thank you for this, I assumed these were dates as well!
I really enjoyed your game, thanks !
Glad you liked it! Thanks for playing!
Great concept, but I wish the check button had told you wich section of info was incorrect. I spent a while assuming I had gotten the trail cams wrong only to end up brute forcing the "fewer" and "several" aspects of the checker to find out it was a typo in another section.
I like how the game doesnt spell out for you what happened and that isnt what you are figuring out it just leaves it up to the player's interpretation.
Looking forward to a full game!
I spent HOURS exploring this game. Most enjoyable thing I think I've played in a while. It was difficult for my pea brain to figure out but I had SO much fun piecing things together regardless. I think I wrote 3 and a half pages of notes lol
I really enjoyed this game, I've been craving something like it without really knowing how to describe it. This game was atmospheric and unsettling without leaning on jumpscares or even animations "out of the corner of your eye". I thoroughly enjoyed clicking through and taking notes on physical paper, trying to sort out my thoughts and flesh out the timeline from the information as I gathered it. I genuinely enjoyed this game and will likely even revisit after a long while to replay once my silly little brain forgets some stuff (as it does).
I found your game very interesting, and I really enjoy this type of puzzle where you search through many documents. I downloaded and tried running it, but the game screen size doesn’t seem to match my display. The screen appears too large, so I have to scroll horizontally to see everything. Is this how it is supposed to work?
Also, when I try to move locations or click on a request note, the game sometimes becomes unresponsive. For newspaper articles, I need to click many times in different places before something reacts. Because of this, I had to give up after the first five minutes.
For reference, my laptop display is set to scale = 150% (1920x1200), and my external monitor is set to scale = 100% (1680x1050). Unfortunately, I experienced the same issue on both displays. Could this be the cause of the issue?
The game looks incredibly fun and I would really love to play it properly.
Hi, thanks for your interest in the game!
Have you tried not setting your game to 150% scale? And what happens if you set it to 100% and then starting it?
What do you mean by "you scroll horizontally"? How are you doing that? The only time you should be able to scroll around the screen is on the desk and only while being zoomed in.
If you only have your normal laptop monitor connect and set to 100% it should theoretically work.
Thanks for your reply. My wording 'scroll horizontally' was probably confusing . I see now that in your design, panning is only meant to happen on the desk while zoomed in. It's interesting, though, that even with 100% scaling and only my laptop monitor, I still have to pan to see everything. I would have thought it would fit on a single screen by default. Apparently, my Lenovo X1 Carbon Gen 11 is just special.
The final check leaves something to be desired but it's super good. A little weird that A Hand With Many Fingers isn't also listed as an influence when this is a 2d version of the exact same game mechanics.
well,,, people are able to make similar games without influencing each other in any way. We could get into philosophical stuff about human nature, but the bottom line is, this person spent a lot of time and put a LOT of care into this game. And telling them that it's not unique, it should give credit to a similar game, etc, etc. is just... insensitive? When you don't know all of the facts?
this isn't a similar game, this is the exact mechanics being used to tell another story in a different genre, down to the card catalog and archival boxes and hunting own names. I think that's great! I just think it could bear shouting out what has to be a clear influence.
hey ! the game looks fun but for those mac users... we have to use our browser, is there any way the game could be compatible to download on mac?
Sorry, for now I can't really support other operating systems. : /