Time Traveling Takins

This is a game that Lydia Wandamo and William Bohrmann both designed and developed for our senior capstone project at the University of Denver. This was a year long project, where William prioritized the programming elements while Lydia developed the UI and design for the game. 

Here the main character writes a sincere letter to the player:

Dear primitive beings,

I write to you from the year 393,134,889. Frankly, y’alls ego are out of proportion with y’alls stupidity! Mankind on Earth will be wiped out due anthropogenic climate change resulting in the melting of Siberian permafrost and releasing a devastating prehistoric virus. Humans who failed to merge with technology or leave Earth end up extinct by spring 2120 - the hundredth anniversary year of the COVID-19 pandemic. By becoming ever increasingly dependent on technology, humans leave physical reality and congregate in the metaverse. You can thank Cyborg Mark Zuckerberg for that. Cyborg Elon Musk leads the effort in building a solar-powered quantum supercomputer located on Mercury. All funded by Dogecoin. 80% of mankind leaves Earth by 2097. The majority of mankind opt to biologically recycle their bodies and utilize the Mercury Metaverse. 6% of mankind survives on Mars until the year 2276, succumbing to a toxic terraforming disaster. Artificially intelligent spaceships use CRISPR and human reproductive material to produce humans to occupy several exoplanets in the local group. Androids occupy select planets in the Milky Way. But even at this point, intergalactic communication is painfully slow. Earth results in being completely trashed by humans. Hundreds of millions of years in the future, after the fall of Earthly mankind, three species in our solar system evolved into intelligent beings: anglerfish, takins, and tarantulas. Genetically modified Anglerfish were sent by robotic drills in 2055 to survive in the underground oceans of Europa, Jupiter’s moon, and dwarf planet Pluto. Anglerfish on Pluto developed intelligence and eventually upgraded to embody cybernetics. These are mechanglerfish - they successfully reached the singularity by a hive mind. They occupy space across the solar system. The Mercury Metaverse engrains Cyborg Mark Zuckerberg - this allows for blissful ignorance and shallow entertainment to be the main takeaway of the metaverse. Cyborg Mark Zuckerberg uses that simulation to interact with reality, while preventing those inside his metaverse to see this dimension. However, our simulation is far superior to yours - it gamifies base reality in 16 bits. It’s a far quirkier kinda existence - we’re Time Gods embodying takins after all! From Earth onward, takins have evolved into a multiplanetary civilization orbiting the Sun. As you already know, takins developed time manipulation ability by utilizing time dilation, accessing the multiverse, installing the metaverse, mastering quantum mechanics, and creating microscopic wormholes. Takins can rewind and fastforward through time at slow and fast speeds; they can also pause time. They are pacifist species and do not attack mechangularfish under any circumstances. However, a statically absurd single event error caused a vulnerability in the firewall. The mechanglerfish who’s hive mind was once only aggressive towards tarantulas was now Martian time traveling tarantulas. Electrocuting takins at sight happened for the first time ever. They had been hacked. A four dimensional war had begun. Who is responsible for this cyberattack? Time traveling tarantulas allied with anglerfish from Europa to destroy deployed malware via the mechangularfish cybernetics. Why? Anglerfish believed their purpose as a species is to evolve to be king of the deep ocean. They thrive in the secrecy of the deep ocean. Outside the ocean, they are paralzyed by their own technology. Time traveling tarantulas were killed on sight by mechanglerfish. Time traveling tarantulas are attuned to an octal numeric system - the binary of the mechangularfish and the quantum of the takins allows for two simulations to effectively interact. The octal base of all tarantula technology causes static in this communication channel. Therefore the strategy of the takins is to take back any time manipulation material from mechangularfish, which patrol on linear paths while manipulating time. Takins steal time manipulation resources from tarantulas as well - now tarantulas stalk you upon sight in four dimensions. Takins use time manipulation as a pacifist mechanism. If the takins secure all the time manipulation material, they can restore their own security by algorithmically destroying tarantula static. This would restore cooperation between takins and mechanglerfish while allowing tarantulas to coexist privately while utilizing shared dimensions. The SSD splits into two. If the tarantulas win, they will have eliminated all the takins and hacked their own instances of mechanglerfish. Truly, it was a war between hackers and cybersecurity engineers. Mechangularfish now viewed creatures without cybernetic enhancement as inferior. This cultural clash has caused war between the Takin Multiplanetary Union and the Mechangularfish Singularity. Currently, there are twelve bases where mechangularfish have illegally occupied and stolen time shards assemblers. TAnon has been tasked by the Takin Multiplanetary Union to infiltrate mechangularfish bases. Stealthily retrieve all timeshard assemblers within the allotted time. The mechangularfish are charging up to enter the fourth dimensions. If the timer reaches zero, mechangularfish will have breached into the fourth dimension. Tarantulas can already attack you from that dimension. Captain Benz is piloting his spacecraft from base to base, avoiding enemy ships. Hacker Frankle destroys mechangularfish malware and installs new cybersecurity systems. This is your team; the three of you are tasked with thwarting the tarantula’s wrath nonviolently. That’s your pathetic story - Twitch fanatics, YouTube content consumers - y’all have duggen way deeper into this absurd simulation. Where are you now? How am I communicating with you now? Well, time dilation satellites in this pixelated simulation orbit the supermassive black hole Sagittarius A* - an internet of timeshard assemblers is webbed by a quantum network of microscopic wormholes. Timeshard assemblers, located throughout the solar system, output four-dimensional matter which manipulates spacetime. In this simulation, you have spontaneously been ordained a Time God. By coating this letter with fastrewind timeshards, my hologram travels back in time. I’ll inform y’all of my journey across the solar system, starting at the Sun and ending on Pluto. Ponder gamers, is your existence astronomically insignificant? How is this reality being constructed? 

Your Guide to the Cosmos, 

TAnon