





Rumors

Conversations are the basis of the rumor system. They allow 1 colonist’s experience to affect any colonist they come into contact with.

So if a colonist sees a dead body, they’ll tell bring it up in conversation. The listening colonists will acquire this information and they’ll also talk about it.

Leave no witnesses.





We’re not sure if we want memories to become “misheard” in conversation. For example, a colonist could talk about “dead rat” and a listener might misinterpret it as “dead body”. That listener would then go around telling everyone about a dead body in the station.

That sounds interesting, but it wouldn’t be fun if your colony became crazy because of a fake rumor that the water was poisoned.

On the other hand, we’re completely fine with a crazy colonist making up stories, because you can quarantine a single crazy colonist.







Talking To Walls

Internally, colonists don’t know that they’re talking to other colonists.

They look for “conversation agents”. Anything could be returned, like a lamp, teddy bear, or wall. The teddy bear wouldn’t display any speech bubbles, but it wouldn’t stop the colonist from responding.

We could also communicate information through the teddy bear. The teddy bear could tell the colonist that all of its friends were murdered.

Picture it. A lone colonist laughing maniacally with a teddy bear, and then going on a killing spree.

More realistically, our long term goal is for colonists to use devices to communicate across the stations (walkie-talkie / cell phone) and for lonely or crazy colonists to talk to inanimate objects.





Toilets

To prove my previous point, here’s a gif of a colonist talking to a toilet.