Our last megagame,ย Contact Light, had our team split into two groups: a Capitol Team running our government and an Exploration Team accomplishing missions throughout the galaxy.
When the Exploration Team was flying about (which was most of the game), we could only communicate via written letters dropped into a mailbox.
Here’s the best of the Readers of Xiu communications and a behind the scenes look into a few moments of our gameplay.
Note that we time-stamped our communications so that our teammates could understand if one letter superseded another.
“11:55AM: We got you fools some artifacts too, because we rule. Wว cร o!! (translation: Fuck yeah)”
Some of us spent our car ride attempting to learn Mandarin profanity.
“11:59AM: Exalts (the maybe-they’re-villains alien folk) look like they are gearing up for a fight. Gonna lull us into a false security and then BAM!!”
After receiving this note, I proceeded to use it to get some of the other humans worked up… I soon learned that my intelligence reports weren’t always awesome.
“12:15PM Head of House: How did you learn about the Exalts? What else can you tell us? Keep learning more about them.”
“12:18PM Exploration Team: Hunch. You are all very pretty. As opportunity permits”
Time-stamps breakdown… As does my temper.
“Head of House: Yo assholes! We use your reports for political leverage. Keep them accurate.”
“Exploration Team: You are a dick, sir. โบ”
“1:10PM Capitol Team: Pretzels are good. Purple has 100% livability planet! We’re supporting the vote for it to be our new home world. And we have new tech for you. At your earliest convenience come get it… Not to rush.”
“Exploration Team: That blows”
The Purple Team found a 100% viable planet very early in the game, which completely threw off our initial strategy. We had to do a massive rethink of our approach because we had never anticipated that a team would find a perfect planet so quickly.
“Blue Team: Watch out for purple”
Both the Blue and Purple teams were passive aggressively at odds for basically the entire game. Occasionally it became actually aggressive.
At some point the Blue folks decided to drop a note in our mailbox… I’m still not sure why they did it or why they didn’t just walk up to us and speak their minds.
The note had almost no impact on our game. We had good relations with all houses… And especially good relations with Blue and Purple. We weren’t looking to choose a side unless we absolutely had to.
However I did send a message to our Exploration Team and asked them to verify whether or not Purple actually had a fully viable planet… Just to play it safe.
“2:51PM: Confirmed – 100% planet is legit”
And shortly thereafter, we unlocked the ability to text message between home and space. Thus we stopped sending the green notes.
I kind of missed them in the second half of the game. They added some interesting complexity, mystery, and intrigue.
For more on Contact Light, check out our review.
