Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes

[Henroid]

Okay, I just found out about this minutes ago and can't contain my excitement. Announcement trailer:

 

 

So basically the game is... one person is actually at the computer trying to defuse a bomb. The other player (or players if you want) have an actual physical manual in front of them with instructions on how to disable that bomb. But player 2 cannot look at the screen. Player 2 must communicate to player 1 how to defuse the bomb.

 

It's more or less like those scenes in movies where Bruce Willis or whoever calls the guy on the radio and is told what to do.

 

I figure this game is right up the alley of this community. Also Nick Breckon must be player 1 and Jake Rodkin is player 2. Or vice versa, whichever.

[zerofiftyone]

I can't stop watching this video of a group totally acing the Hardcore level.

  Reveal hidden contents

 

It's in spoiler tags just in case people don't want to see all the advanced modules in a video.

[tberton]

They talked about this on a Thumbs GDC episode ages ago, didn't they?

 

EDIT: K,  not a GDC episode. But almost exactly a year ago! Episode 175: It's an Itchio

[Spenny]

I've played it, it's super great. Coworker and I tried it at GDC, when I asked what role he wanted to take, he sheepishly responded that he thought the Occulus would be cool, but assumed we would both want it. I was super excited to be the guy with manual, things worked out pretty great. 

 

It's a really cool mix of a physical materials, hidden information and time pressure. The manual is akin to the materials you get in Sherlock Holmes Consulting Detective, and physicality like that is such an under appreciated aspect of games. The rest of the game makes that physical experience holistically perfect.

 

[zerofiftyone]

  On 10/7/2015 at 2:56 PM, tberton said:

They talked about this on a Thumbs GDC episode ages ago, didn't they?

 

EDIT: K,  not a GDC episode. But almost exactly a year ago! Episode 175: It's an Itchio

Wow, a year? That's gone by frighteningly quickly!

 

@Spenny Yeah, that's interesting that you bring up Consulting Detective; I've been describing this game as a tabletop experience rather than a traditional video game.

[Henroid]

  On 10/7/2015 at 2:56 PM, tberton said:

They talked about this on a Thumbs GDC episode ages ago, didn't they?

 

EDIT: K,  not a GDC episode. But almost exactly a year ago! Episode 175: It's an Itchio

Whoa, I'd forgotten they talked about this. Awesome!

[Jordan A]

I don't own a printer, so I figured I'd just print this at work in preparation for release.

 

Then I saw the manual is at www.bombmanual.com and I was like, yeah, you know what, I'm going to just download this over 4G and upload it to my Google Drive and print it from there instead.

[zerofiftyone]

  On 10/8/2015 at 9:31 AM, Jordan A said:

I don't own a printer, so I figured I'd just print this at work in preparation for release.

 

Then I saw the manual is at www.bombmanual.com and I was like, yeah, you know what, I'm going to just download this over 4G and upload it to my Google Drive and print it from there instead.

Haha good good.

[Henroid]

Is that seriously where the manual is hosted? Because I am NOT going to that URL at all, what with my country's crazy Patriot Act bullshit. "No no this is for a video game!" isn't going to fly and will just cause more problems.

[zerofiftyone]

  On 10/8/2015 at 2:48 PM, Henroid said:

Is that seriously where the manual is hosted? Because I am NOT going to that URL at all, what with my country's crazy Patriot Act bullshit. "No no this is for a video game!" isn't going to fly and will just cause more problems.

Hey no worries. I just hosted it here: http://1drv.ms/1VH3SQo

[Gwardinen]

This video is absurd and amazing.

[zerofiftyone]

It's great. One of the guys in that video is now attempting the near impossible task of memorising the entire manual so that he can beat the game completely solo.

Yikes.

 

On a general note, my fianceé and I are having a lot of fun with this game.

[Erkki]

We played this a little bit at my birthday party yesterday. It seemed fun but I got distracted with other conversations while some guys were playing and they didn't continue for very long so I'm not sure how fun they found it. For me it was pretty cool trying to be the bomb disarmer (first attempt failed though).

[YoThatLimp]

  On 10/9/2015 at 5:44 PM, zerofiftyone said:

On a general note, my fianceé and I are having a lot of fun with this game.

 

This has been an excellent SO-who-is-not-into-games game. 

 

[SecretAsianMan]

I really want to try this, especially with someone who is less technically oriented than myself.  I'm curious to see how different people describe things.  Most of the videos I've seen of people playing have the people using common but vague descriptors while in my head I think of specific but probably more technical and thus less easily understood terms.

[Gwardinen]

As long as you manage to find common terminology within the group, it's fine. The people I played with came to call the Who's On First? module "word puzzle", the password module "anagrams" and the keypad module "symbols" or just "Greek shit".

 

The place we haven't found consistency yet is in explaining the words in Who's On First - some people call UR "uniform romeo", some "letters UR", etc. This can be a problem under time constraints, if you think you know what someone means before they're finished talking. Many mistakes have happened when describing "your" as "your no apostrophe" when by the time you've said "no" they've already clicked "you're".

[SecretAsianMan]

That's kind of what I mean.  I'm used to using the NATO Phonetic Alphabet because I use it all the time at work.  I think it'd be fun to try stuff like that in fake yet appropriate setting like this game.

[Xeneth]

Haven't played this yet but I'm super excited. Heading to a small party I think will contain a fair percentage of game industry type folks this weekend and thought I'd share my slightly overzealous prep...

• Loaded the game onto my Surface Pro with bluetooth controller/mouse so it's easy for someone to be "with the bomb" somewhere in the room where people can't see.
  • (Oculus Rift would be optimal/amazing but I simply don't have the money/hardware to make that portable.)
• Printed defusal manual into a 3 ring binder because I feel like multiple people poring over a physical object is the intended atmosphere as opposed to people flipping through it on their phones and tablets.
  • (Did you know the actual .pdf has that bad photocopy effect you get when you make copies of copies BUILT IN? This detail excites me far more than is reasonable...)
• Pages are inside slick plastic sleeves with some heft/thickness so you can scrawl temporary notes right on the manual in dry erase marker.
  • (Some modules appear to benefit greatly from a bit of visual elimination or note taking.)
• I've included some colored clippy tabs in case the group wants to mark particular modules for rapid review.

Wish me luck guys! I'm planning on mostly teaching and observing how different people tackle the challenges. I'll try to remember to report back about how it went over and what aspects of the design wound up generating the most interesting moments.

 

 

 

[BobbyBesar]

This game is particularly good when some (read:everybody) involved are drunk. Obviously harder though.

Apparently it was inspired by an episode of Archer, so its totally appropriate.

[Erkki]

Wow, you seem well prepared Xeneth!

 

I am hosting a small party for my Spanish group (including the teacher) next week. We will likely get a bit drunk. I wonder if the spanish translation (which I downloaded but didn't print yet as it could be there will be a new revision before the day) is good enough that we could try this. Also I wish there was an iPad version of the game because setting up an extra monitor in the living room is not ideal. Or maybe I should bring my work laptop home.

[Cordeos]

  On 10/23/2015 at 8:49 PM, BobbyBesar said:

This game is particularly good when some (read:everybody) involved are drunk. Obviously harder though.

Apparently it was inspired by an episode of Archer, so its totally appropriate.

 

[brkl]

I played a few games of this with my girlfriend and it was great. I was worried the language barrier would be too great for her to decode the manual, but it's not a huge problem at least with the simpler bombs. Unfortunately I suspect it wouldn't work as a party game in this country because of the language. Except maybe among people actually studying English in uni.

[Erkki]

Curious, for some reason I thought that a lot of Finnish people speak English. Very accented, but still recognizable as English. I have probably drawn false conclusions because I've met disproportionately English-speaking finns?

 

Anyway, if the manual is translated, it should allow playing in that language comfortably, I think? Well, I'll find out in a week. Of course there is the problem that fan translations may not be great or keep up with versions they introduce in the game.

[brkl]

Oh, they speak English, but they usually dislike having to use it under pressure. Party games have to be really light in my experience.

[brkl]

I made this thread because I'd like to play with youse: https://www.idlethumbs.net/forums/topic/10490-keep-talking-and-nobody-explodes-unbombing-through-skype/