CEEFAX: IN THE TIME OF PLAGUE
Learn what food is safe for your kids to eat by reading BBC Ceefax. Bleak? Maybe. Tasty food? God, no. Chill music? Oh yes.
The first time you play you'll need to click on the number input field, but it will auto-focus after that. You can safely read the menu with 998.
Why make a Ceefax game?
One of my earliest memories is sitting in front of the TV in the morning, before cartoons started, and playing with Ceefax on the TV.
Weirdly, I remember reading all of these dark and horrible news stories - as the news often is - but still having a good time because the music was so chill and relaxing.
Nothing did tonal disconnect better than Ceefax in my eyes.
So I wanted to bring that into the plague theme too. Obviously plague times are dark and horrible, but that classic Ceefax music makes your potentially life ruining meal decision just a little better, right?
But what was Ceefax?
As some background, Ceefax was a news service introduced in 1979 that was beamed to your TV through the actual TV signal. For a lot of people it was their quickest and main source of up to date news, but the service also had games, weather, whole magazines, and you could even book holidays. It sadly died in 2012 because of the digital switchover, but it remains an iconic part of British TV history.
Game Jam info
TECHNICALLY, the game also does all of the wildcards, but in the vaguest way possible:
80's Baby - This one it actually does do. Ceefax was introduced right before the 80s and so the visual style IS 80s. Just not a part of it that media usually shows.
Take a chance on me - The food that is safe from plague is randomly picked each time, and some clues are more hidden than others.
I wish it would rain - There is a weather page, and that weather page has changing weather...
See more lovely CEEFAX music on YouTube:
"Smooth Lovin" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Lobby Time by Kevin MacLeod
Link: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/3986-lobby-time
License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Carefree by Kevin MacLeod
Link: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/3476-carefree
License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Download
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Comments
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This is such a clever and inspired concept! Love the immense retro vibes I'm getting with this! And every good game needs a page for "meat prices"...
Thank you so much for the kind words!
I've forwarded your comment onto all of the game studios, so hopefully we'll be seeing some hot meat stock market action in the next Crash Bandicoot game!
I love this so much. I too was a huge fan of Ceefax as a kid and this game captures it really well. Nice job!
Thank you for the kind words! Glad I'm pulling more people aboard the nostalgia train
Adore so much about this. I'm from the states so not at all familiar with ceefax, but now I'm fascinated to research more into it as a precursor to the 24h news cycle. The recreation of an 80s digital interface is on point, I'm hugely envious (I've done some projects trying to do something similar and this is just so slick).
What an amazing comment to receive out of the blue! I really appreciate that you enjoyed this little thing, and absolutely encourage you to look into Ceefax more. There's not a huge amount online about it but it was hugely influential and there hasn't really been anything like it since
This is incredible. You've made it look so amazing. It reminds me a bit of SCP; it's like an exploration game but you're exploring CEEFAX lol
ok the plague made it to madagascar, we are all doomed
Haha I'm glad you noticed that easter egg!
Thank you so much for the kind words, really really encouraging!
Probably started in Greenland, smart plague. :D
This is really awsome! It wasn't as much of a game as it was an experience but it's cool. WOW, people are really creative, that's all I have to say. GJ
Oh wow, that's one hell of a compliment haha! Thank you so much, and I'm really glad you liked it :)