How the Guardian of the Archive, six Seekers, and four Facilitators move a mystery about silence and complicity across six levels, in Peniche.
ERUDITA never scripts a conversation. It only designs the conditions for one: who meets whom, where, with what evidence, and when. Everything below is the machinery that produces those conditions.
"The game designs the encounters. The players make the connections. The conversation reveals the plot."
Each Seeker follows one path, alone, linked to their individual clue and their character's story.
Two Seekers are sent to the same location, not told why, and find each other there.
A third Seeker arrives unexpectedly, carrying evidence that confirms, contradicts, or complicates what the pair already believed.
All Seekers, all Facilitators, and Dra. Catarina meet in one place to close the investigation.
Six Seekers investigate. Four Facilitators guide from inside the fiction. A layer of Hidden Players keeps everyone slightly uncertain who is playing, and who is part of the story.
They are searching for the truth, and the game begins to matter when they must decide what to do with it.
Inside the game they are virtual characters, sending messages and clues. At the trio encounters and final gathering, the same character becomes a real human in the same room.
The flow document walks through exactly two Seekers, Marta and Sofia, as a working example. Every other Seeker's Level 1 runs on the same shape, in parallel, with different content.
Each Heritage location provides both narrative significance and an exchange of information, before the flow sends both Seekers onward: "At V4, Marta's video plays, heritage info exchanges, to move to the next level" — and the same happens, in parallel, for Sofia.
The same four-stage structure (solo → pair → trio → final gathering) plays out concretely across six numbered levels.
After Marta and Sofia each answer Dra. Catarina's question at Heritage 1, both move to the next level. Each receives a new video instruction telling them where to go, the same location for both, though neither is told why, or who else will be there.
A short Hidden Level bridges the two heritage stops: a text message from Dra. Catarina, new coordinates, and a nudge toward Level 3, before the pair actually meets.
Marta and Sofia arrive at the museum and meet a third Seeker, unexpected, carrying a new piece of evidence. The visit stays organic: the game does not script the conversation or dictate a conclusion, only the location, the timing, and what each Seeker is carrying.
Afterwards, the trio is messaged to download a voucher and head to a bar, "something unexpected is waiting for you." There, a virtual Facilitator becomes a real human presence and joins the conversation, the game's first virtual-to-physical transition. Across town, the other trio (Rui, Isabel, Daniel) meets at a different heritage site, then a different bar, and encounters its own Hybrid Player, a character operating with a double identity, virtual and real.
It is also at this level that Tomas becomes the Saboteur, not by design, but by decision: Francisco Esteves pressures, persuades, or bribes him into interfering with the other Seekers' investigation.
A real example of the bonus message sent to Trio 1 after Level 3, linking the game directly to a local business in Peniche.
The six Seekers are reshuffled into three new pairs, each sent to a fresh heritage location for a human conversation. Dra. Catarina asks one question per player, different for each, because it is tied to the virtual character they have been following.
Three answer options are offered; the choice triggers a pop-up, and the pair moves on to Level 5.
Before all six Seekers come together, they are paired once more, crossing the Level 4 combinations so that, by Level 6, every Seeker has compared notes with several others rather than just one partner.
All six Seekers meet together with Dra. Catarina and the Facilitators. One closing question is sent to all six, across both trios:
"After this conversation, what do you understand differently about the story, and what do you now believe is the right thing to do?"
The symbols in this map correspond to real production choices, not abstractions.
Stands for the videos created to narrate the story, one numbered clip per beat, chained together as each Seeker moves through a level.
Heritage locations appear at each game level, each one marked with a different colour in the working diagram.
Every diamond marks a Seeker conversation, a point where the game hands control back to the players.
All videos are produced vertically, following a NetShort-style one-minute drama concept: short, cinematic units built to create tension and move Seekers to the next stage.
Each answered question is scored as a percentage against the story's ethical and moral core, and shown on a shared leaderboard.
The platform collects data from every answer along the way, and the AI analyses it, feeding back into how the Guardian responds.
This creates a direct link between the game and local stakeholders, integrating local businesses into the player experience, like this bonus message routing a trio to Café Cale after their Level 3 museum visit.
Five ideas, pulled directly from the working notes, that explain why the flow is shaped the way it is.
The game designs the encounters. The players make the connections. The conversation reveals the plot.
The central design formulaThe structure is shared; the journey is individual. Each Seeker's path may differ, but all paths connect at the trio encounters and the final gathering.
On the six parallel solo pathsWe call them Seekers because they are not playing to win. They are searching for the truth, and the game begins to matter when they must decide what to do with it.
On why "Seeker," not "player"The Facilitators have a double identity: virtual and human. This blurs the boundary between the fictional world of ERUDITA and the real social interaction of the players.
On the virtual-to-physical transitionHidden Players keep every encounter uncertain. Seekers are never completely sure who is simply playing the game, and who may already be part of the story.
On ambiguity as a design toolThe game creates the encounter. The evidence creates the tension. The players create the meaning.
On what the platform does, and does not, control