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On February 27th, 2054, an alien signal was detected, originating from a satellite within our solar system.
Two hours later, it vanished.

A Starless Void is a 4000 word visual novel about humanity's first contact with an alien technology, and the lengths we'd go to to reach each other. Set in Western Australia.

Created in two weeks for Game Off 2025.

Content Warning  -  coarse language.

Linear story  -  4259 words.

If you liked A Starless Void, check out my other stories on my website!

This visual novel was directly inspired by LEMMiNO's Youtube video "Shouting at Stars: A History of Interstellar Messages."
If you are at all interested in my stories premise, I highly recommend you give this a watch.

The Wow! signal is covered in detail at 1:49:06. I found this such compelling evidence for intelligent life that it formed the basis of this story.

Controls

Action	Keyboard & Mouse
Continue	Left Mouse Click
Menu	Right Mouse Click
Next / Previous	Scroll wheel
Skip	Control
Hide UI	Middle Mouse Button

Other controls can be viewed in the 'Controls' menu in game.

SPOILERS. Please read after playing the game.

In planning this story, I designed an alien plaque. As the story changed, this plaque came to represent both plaque one and two. All of it is fully translatable, excluding the star emission spectra in the bottom right.

A few notes:

• The purple is meant to represent elements that are visible in ultraviolet light.
• The arrows represent a shift in gradient across the light spectrum (their equivalent of representing directionality).
• This plaque is 41.88cm tall, and the satellites antenna (pictured to the left of the figures) is 267cm tall.
• The alien's star system can be found somewhere on this map. The galactic centre is to the right.

I really enjoyed making this, so chances are I will come back after the jam and create the official three plaques.