to my family
on earth
To My Family On Earth is a first-person narrative exploration game set on an abandoned space station. You wake with no memory, drifting through the wreckage. As you read logs and notes, the truth unfolds—an experiment with bio-robots went out of control, consuming all organic life on the station. The mission was a success. The planet is thriving. But why are you still here? And what role did you play in it?
storytelling
The game unfolds in three stages. In the beginning, you find the captain’s hopeful messages—plans for the future, letters to his family, and reports of progress. Then, the tone shifts. Logs describe growing concerns, containment breaches, and failed evacuation attempts. By the final stage, you guess what happened.
Then, the tone shifts. Logs describe growing concerns, containment breaches, and failed evacuation attempts. By the final stage, you guess what happened.
Each log or note you pick up triggers a thought from your character, at first making it seem like you are the captain, the last survivor. But as the pieces come together, a different picture emerges.
You were never part of the crew.
I experimented with different styles of writing. The captain’s letters are personal and heartfelt, written as if he were speaking directly to their partner and daughter, Amy. They show their hopes, sacrifices, and the small, human moments that kept them going.
The logs, on the other hand, are more factual at first, reports on the mission’s progress, technical updates, and emergency protocols. But as things start to get darker, they become more frantic, with hurried notes, incomplete messages, and desperate warnings.
environmental storytelling
The station is frozen in time. A terraforming progress chart tracks slow improvements, but at the bottom, one word stands out—Sacrifice. A birthday reminder for Emma is still on the pinboard. The daily schedule lists routine tasks, but an emergency biohazard drill now carries a different weight. A crew photo and a child’s drawing, faces and memories that never made it home. Among the drifting debris, personal objects a small bunny toy.
retrospective
This was my second game ever, and looking back, it feels like both too much and too little. The narrative is too obvious, the level design rough, the lighting slightly off. The placement of logs and letters could have been less messy. But in a way, that’s also proof of progress because now I can see all of it. I know what I would fix if I came back to this game. Writing in different styles, especially the technical logs, was a challenge that pushed me to research and experiment. But as a fan of dramatic sci-fi, I still feel satisfied with what I created having very little gamedev knowledge during my first months of school.