The Bridge

Bringing the Controls Online
You begin the game adrift in space in almost complete darkness. A bewildering array of blank screens and unpowered controls before you, only partially blocking an unnerving view of unfamiliar space. Only one button seems to be active. You may as well hit it. What's the worst that could happen? On second thought, maybe that's not a question you should be asking in this situation. Best, perhaps, to just hit the button and let the chips fall where they may, even if the chips should turn out to include freeze-dried slices of you amongst a cloud of space debris.

More buttons to push! That must have been the main power control! Well, then, let's see what these ones do.

After some experimentation with the controls, you will find yourself with all of the displays working, even if they do display either nothing at all or just nothing intelligible. But hang in there, they have to mean something ... don't they? You will also find more and more of the ship's controls coming online, until Surprise! you teleport, or otherwise transport, yourself, or an avatar of yourself, or ... oh heck! You've got enough problems to solve without worrying about useless stuff like that!

Your mission now, whether you should decide to accept it or not, is to solve the puzzle/planet/mystery known as Side A.

Learning to Fly
Once Side A exploration has been completed to 50%, more controls are activated.

One can be used to select a destination. Yes! You can go somewhere! Not very far at first, but fret not. Somewhere is better than nowhere, and nowhere is where you are now.

Another control rotates your main navigational display through three dimensions. It doesn't appear to be aligned to anything useful presently, but perhaps it could be ... or not, maybe it would just be time wasted when you could be doing something useful.

Then there is the control that is clearly not labelled "Go There." Very handy! Labels are also very handy, but they tend to be mostly lacking, and cryptic to the point of obtuseity when present. Is obtuseity a word? Maybe.

And let's not forget the button that makes a sound like ET faxing home, but doesn't accomplish anything obvious. There are others too, which obviously do something but it is not often immediately obvious what. The life of a sleuth is never an easy one; the life of a sleuth lost in space less so than most.