Briefing

Hi! Do you enjoy your calm, free days off, AE team leader? Well, this will not last for long; the Storm is coming! Multiple historically significant dig sites are about to be hit with a huge wave. Raising the water level will make access to those dig sites way more challenging, and water would destroy everything it touches. So pack your bags, gather your team, and fly off to your current Archeological Emergency: dig site at Hiroshima (Japan). That dig site contains artifacts of the Modern era, and you have to save as many artifacts as you can before the water reaches them. 

The next stop on your list is Williamsburg (USA) to save artifacts from the Modern and Colonial eras. Next up is Vatican City (even if it is not spared by the Storm). There, you would have a chance to save relics from the Renaissance era. Then, you will head off to Hagia Sophia (Turkey) to save Modern and Medieval artifacts. The last stop on your list is Ur (Iraq), where Modern, Medieval, and Mesopotamian artifacts are about to be crushed by the Storm!

Operational Manual

Once deployed to the dig site, you would have minimal time to recover artifacts before the Storm. 

You are provided with standard issue tools in a Bronze grade: Brush, Pickaxe, and Shovel. Each has its advantages and disadvantages; consider each before making your move. You can always enable the provided Mind Expansion Device by pressing the "Space" button to have unlimited time to think. At the same time, the world around you is "paused." Let's talk about tools in detail:

• Brush - This is your primary device for uncovering artifacts. It is guaranteed to produce your artifact in a "Perfect" condition, given that one was in the tile you were digging up. However, it is a very slow tool, so using only Brush would not produce many artifacts. 
• Pickaxe - also not a very fast tool for digging soil, and if soil contained artifacts - it is almost certain that it would be badly damaged, for all intents and purposes - destroyed. But if you encounter some Petrified Bones or Rocks, Pickaxe is your best friend for dealing with them quickly.
• Shovel - less deadly to artifacts than Pickaxe, but would at very least "Weather" it so it would no longer be in a "Perfect" condition. Delicate artifacts can still be destroyed by Shovel. But it is super helpful to shovel the soil you don't need.

Once you arrive on a site, try to figure out what visual clues are for the artifact-rich tile on the current dig site by doing test excavations with your Shove. Once you know which artifact-rich tiles are, try to use only Brush on those from there on to preserve as many artifacts as possible in the best condition possible. 

Another thing to consider is that places that have multiple eras of artifacts available are layered, so the top layers only contain the most recent era of artifacts(in most cases, these would be modern-era artifacts), and to reach artifacts from older eras, you would have to dig deeper.

You are also issued a Journal to track the artifacts you have found and which ones you have rescued. The journal also tracks the condition of artifacts when they are found, which is handy to see how many are rescued in "Perfect" condition. This is important since we would send you transport to the following location only if you have secured a mandated number of artifacts in perfect condition. 

P.S. 

The original scope of the game was slightly more enormous, containing 12 eras/locations instead of the 5 we have here. But the work week was busy and tiresome, so we had only so much time to work on the game. So, with the rapidly approaching deadline(just like Storm in our game), we had to scramble and limit gameplay to only 5 eras/locations. If you loved our project and are disappointed that you have no more levels to play through - fear not! We have the complete version published now as a separate game to not update this game during Jam. You can find it HERE It was a mere 12 hours late... Wish we had a time machine to get back in time and submit it to Jam instead :D