No, this is not a joke. Posted under the alt name of DPC Labs, Dinosaur Polo Club has released bite-sized co-op experimental puzzle game RTFM (Read The F*cking Manual). The group of seven people created RTFM during a week-long game jam. The game’s description says it “simulates the surreal stress between workers at a fictional corporation called Harmonic Inc, while they work together to process mysterious data.” Players can choose to cooperate or not when solving puzzles to prevent a decoherence meltdown.
“We love game jams!” says Amie Wolken, CEO of Dinosaur Polo Club, in a press release. “Since before my time, DPC has embraced Creativity Week, a time where you can express yourself in imaginative ways that there isn’t time for in an ordinary work week. During Creativity Week, we spend time making things together but without the constraints of project work, and it’s not just game jams; we’ve had dinos who will paint, or make physical prints, or other wildly cool creative things. RTFM is just one of the awesome results born of the passion and creativity in the team, sparked during one of these weeks.”
Here is a description of the game, via Dinosaur Polo Club:
In RTFM, office terror unveils its hysterical side as two players work together as Troubleshooter and Operator, solving puzzles and staying one step ahead of a hostile ghost in the machine. The brief, replayable experience centers around social sleuthing and puzzle-solving, a bite-sized experience inspired by games such as Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes, and sci-fi media such as classic creepypastas, The X-Files, Portal, and Control. Reciprocate trust and communication to hold reality itself together!
Crack open the User Manual and read the f*cking thing as the Troubleshooter (protip: print it out to help prevent prying eyes from seeing something they shouldn’t), or sit down behind the controls as the Terminal Operator to relay on-screen puzzles to one another. Work together or weave white lies into your teamwork to discover three different endings.
Mysterious consequences are threatened by your corporate overlords as the two players must work together without fear of failstates. Decode one another’s actions as trust either blossoms, or worse, erodes. While reality defragmentation may sound horrifying, the real horror may be in your ear, pretending to help. Or in getting a negative performance review.
“While it takes a few years between major game releases, we’re always making stuff at Dinosaur Polo Club,” says Casey Lucas-Quaid, the studio’s Community Manager. “We liked this Creativity Week project enough that we thought other people might, too. And we always do something for April Fool’s, so this seemed like a way to let others have a play with something the team enjoyed making while also getting back to our roots a bit. Mini Metro was born in the Ludum Dare game jam, after all.”
Developed by DPC Labs/Dinosaur Polo Club, RTFM is available for PC and Mac via itch.io.
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