The Lost Ruins

Overview:

The Lost Ruins was our entry concept for GBJAM 14, built around the themes Game Boy and OLD GOLD. The game was planned as a 2D top-down narrative exploration game with environmental puzzles.

You play as a villager from Kharsa who discovers half of an ancient artifact preserved by his family. Believing it contains sacred knowledge, he leaves the village with two companions to find the other half. 

The journey takes him from the ruins surrounding Kharsa, through a sealed temple buried in the desert, and eventually into a version of that temple from the distant past.

What begins as a search for something sacred gradually becomes something else. The artifact isn't quite what it seems. And neither is the thing waiting at the end.

Concept:

The initial idea was fairly simple:

What if an ancient civilization's "god" was actually a machine?

The protagonist comes from a village called Kharsa, built around ruins that nobody remembers the origin of.

He discovers half of an ancient artifact that his family has preserved for generations.

Believing that it contains sacred knowledge, he sets out to find the other pieces.

The journey eventually takes him somewhere much stranger than he expected.

Prototype Status: 

The Lost Ruins was not completed during GBJAM 14.

We weren't able to finish the playable build before the jam deadline, but we did develop the game's narrative, visual direction, environment concepts, artifact designs and scene planning. This page documents what we managed to create during the jam rather than presenting it as a finished game.

The project may be developed into a playable version in the future.