{"slug": "i-built-a-1974-nasa-horror-survival-game-using-ai-and-it-actually-surprised-mw", "title": "I Built a 1974 NASA Horror Survival Game Using AI — And It Actually Surprised Mw", "summary": "\"LAST CALL,\" a text-based survival horror game set in 1974, where the player commands a stranded NASA crew on a secret planet called Tartarus. The game uses AI to evaluate the player's typed commands across five transmissions, measuring composure and precision to determine the crew's survival. Unlike typical AI games, the system analyzes the player's emotional state and vocabulary, rewarding calm, signal-focused decisions while penalizing panic.", "body_md": "50 crew members. 5 transmissions. Something else on the planet.\nTry to get all 50 home. Then come back and read this.\nLAST CALL is a text-based survival game set in 1974. You play as Lieutenant Kira Malone — acting commander of the ARES-7, stranded on a classified planet called Tartarus somewhere between Saturn and Uranus. Your communications array has power for exactly 5 transmissions before it goes dark permanently.\nEarth is 1.4 billion kilometres away. No one knows you're there.\nEvery word you type determines who lives.\nIn the summer of 1974, NASA launched its most secret mission.\nThe world was told ARES-7 was an unmanned atmospheric probe. The truth was carried by one man — Mission Commander Harold Voss — in a sealed envelope. The real destination was Tartarus, an undocumented rocky body hidden from all public star charts. The reason it was classified: Tartarus was broadcasting a signal. Repeating. Structured. Deliberate.\n50 crew members were told it was a geological survey. None of them knew the truth.\nThey landed on Day 61. The signal stopped on Day 63.\nBy Day 66, Commander Voss was unconscious. His sealed orders — missing.\nToday is Day 67. You are all that is left.\nThe game runs across five screens:\nSetup — Your ship name is randomly generated every run. No two games start the same.\nThe Story — A classified NASA dossier establishes who you are, why ARES-7 is on Tartarus, and why no one on Earth is coming unless you reach them first.\nMission Protocol — Five rules before you begin. The most important one:\nSignal must reach 75% by your final transmission or rescue never locks your position.\nSignal below 30% — Tartarus keeps you.\nShip Dossier — Your crew manifest, ship systems reference, last known position. Study it. The AI reads your vocabulary.\n5 Transmissions — The entire game. Everything you built toward comes down to what you type here.\nThis is the part I am most proud of.\nMost AI games use the model to generate story. LAST CALL uses it to read you. Every transmission you send is evaluated across four dimensions simultaneously:\nCalm, consistent, signal-focused commands compound across all five rounds. One panicked message in round 3 can undo two good rounds before it. Players feel genuinely sharper after a few runs — not because they learned a system, but because they learned to stay composed under pressure.\nThat is not a game mechanic. That is a real skill.\nNot everyone knows 1970s NASA ship terminology. So I built a collapsible Ship Systems Reference panel directly into the transmission screen — always one click away, never in the way.\nIt tells you what exists on the ship. The reactor core, the signal amplifier, the atmospheric scrubbers, the emergency pods. It gives you the vocabulary to write precise, decisive commands.\nIt does not tell you what to do. That part is still on you.\nEvery run ends with a full mission debrief — every decision replayed, every consequence revealed, and a Survival Archetype assigned based on your behaviour pattern across all five transmissions.\nThe report is designed to be screenshotted. What archetype did you get?\nOn transmission 3, if the crisis takes you to the Tartarus surface — look at the far right of the darkness.\nThat is all I will say.\nMeDo handled this kind of project remarkably well. The multi-turn conversation system carries full context across every transmission — so the AI can reference a choice you made in round 2 when generating round 4's crisis, without any extra engineering from my side. The game feels alive because the AI genuinely remembers what you did.\nThe hardest part was not the logic. It was the tone.\nGetting the CRT terminal aesthetic right. Making the story feel like a real 1974 NASA document. Writing crisis transmissions that feel urgent without feeling cheap. The game needed to earn its tension, not manufacture it.\nI think it does.\nTry to survive. Try to get all 50 home.\nAnd whatever you do — do not let the signal drop below 30%.\nBuilt for the Build with MeDo Hackathon 2026\n#BuiltWithMeDo", "url": "https://wpnews.pro/news/i-built-a-1974-nasa-horror-survival-game-using-ai-and-it-actually-surprised-mw", "canonical_source": "https://dev.to/aditya_mishra_1919/i-built-a-1974-nasa-horror-survival-game-using-ai-and-it-actually-surprised-mw-212p", "published_at": "2026-05-19 21:49:50+00:00", "updated_at": "2026-05-19 22:02:39.501384+00:00", "lang": "en", "topics": ["science", "products"], "entities": ["NASA", "ARES-7", "Tartarus", "Kira Malone", "Harold Voss"], "alternates": {"html": "https://wpnews.pro/news/i-built-a-1974-nasa-horror-survival-game-using-ai-and-it-actually-surprised-mw", "markdown": "https://wpnews.pro/news/i-built-a-1974-nasa-horror-survival-game-using-ai-and-it-actually-surprised-mw.md", "text": "https://wpnews.pro/news/i-built-a-1974-nasa-horror-survival-game-using-ai-and-it-actually-surprised-mw.txt", "jsonld": "https://wpnews.pro/news/i-built-a-1974-nasa-horror-survival-game-using-ai-and-it-actually-surprised-mw.jsonld"}}