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Experience First Contact with Xenolanguage

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Category: 2020
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Berkeley, CA – Welcome to five minutes in the future where aliens have made first contact and you have been recruited to decipher their message. Introducing Xenolanguage, an intimate tabletop story game from the award-winning studio, Thorny Games. Available today on Kickstarter, Xenolanguage immerses players in first contact with alien life, messy human relationships and what happens when they mix together.

“At Thorny Games, we live for games that tell epic stories through one of our most intimate tools: language,” said Hakan Seyalıoğlu, Co-Founder of Thorny Games. “Our previous games have been meticulously crafted and well-received, garnering multiple Game of the Year titles. Xenolanguage is the next evolution of our narrative RPG slate.”

In Xenolanguage, you play as a group of scientists bound together through a shared past with unsettled questions. Your task is to understand why the aliens have come and what they are trying to tell us. You soon discover the key to understanding lies in your memories together. The game gives a nod to soulful sci-fi media like Arrival and Contact, but tells its own story.

Following the success of Dialect and Sign, Xenolanguage is the third tabletop story game from Thorny Games and is by far their most ambitious. Xenolanguage uses a modular channeling board of alien symbols and a custom soundtrack to immerse players in the experience of first contact. Players all touch a planchette-like lens and channel over alien symbols as they receive and interpret messages. As the game goes on, they understand the meaning of the symbols while also reliving the protagonists’ messy histories. Different symbols, soundtracks, and story cards allow for surprise and replayability; every session is unique.

“Your connections with fellow players drive the game,” said Kathryn Hymes, Co-Founder of Thorny Games. “In Xenolanguage, you will explore who you turn to in moments of doubt and in moments of discovery, what lies beneath your shared memories, and how the bonds of a relationship change under the light of first contact.”

Xenolanguage invites players to dive into an immersive world and experience a first contact story through channeling. As the game unfolds, players will progressively discover meanings for the symbols on the board, grapple with what they learn, and see how it changes them. There are no easy answers here; only unsettling possibilities and the choices you make when faced with the true unknown.

“Xenolanguage is the single most evocative and emotional game I have ever played,” said Matthew Gravelyn, Game Designer and Writer. “I was totally blown away by the experience this game delivered.”

Players interested in experiencing a personal story of first contact can join in on the game’s Kickstarter for the next 28 days. You can view additional assets and details on Xenolanguage through the game’s Kickstarter page here.

 

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