What is Saknussemm
In 1863 Professor Lidenbrock found a runic scrap in an Icelandic book. It was signed by Arne Saknussemm, an alchemist who claimed to have gone down through the crater of Snæfellsjökull to the centre of the earth, and it ended with a Latin sentence: descend, bold traveller, and you will reach it. He took his nephew Axel and the guide Hans, and went. Saknussemm is that journey played as a cave you walk through — one continuous world of galleries, lit by the lantern you carry and by whatever glows down there, that goes down through six acts and thirty chambers to the centre.
Every chamber is closed by a puzzle, and every puzzle is one of the difficulties the book put in the expedition's way. The reversed cryptogram. The shadow of Scartaris pointing at the right chimney. A rope that has to reach exactly. The thirst in the wrong gallery and Hans listening at the granite for water. Axel alone in the dark, shouting and steering by the echo. The Lidenbrock Sea with its currents, its monsters and its geyser. The storm that turns the compass round. The fields of bones with their strata to read. The wall of rock and the charge that has to be exact. Solve it and the stair below unseals.
How to play
- Walk with WASD or the arrow keys, or with the stick on the left on a phone. Each chamber is an open cave with a way in at the top and a stair out at the bottom, side pockets to explore, lamp oil and Saknussemm's runes to collect for points, and one carved stone that glows when you are near it: his mark. Stand by the mark and press E, Enter, Space or the button on the right to face the chamber's puzzle.
- There are seven kinds of puzzle and each comes back harder. Rune wheels that drag their neighbours when they turn. A sun dial that moves a shadow across a crater. Pieces of rope, logs or guncotton that must add up exactly. A maze you cannot see, mapped by shouting and crossed on a budget of steps — twice with a reversed compass. A wall of stone where listening tells you how many steps away the water is, and you may strike only once or twice. A crossing on a grid where geysers erupt on a fixed count, currents drag you along the arrows and monsters patrol on their own beat. And strata to put in order from clues, always in their true geological order.
- Every puzzle is built backwards from its own solution, so none of them is impossible, and undo and restart inside a puzzle cost nothing but time. Points come from each chamber cleared, from speed, and from solving the puzzle without a single wrong answer. Oil and runes found in the side pockets add a little more.
- Your progress is saved on this device, chamber by chamber, so the descent can be made over several sittings. The score is sent once, when you reach the centre. Turning back to the surface sends nothing.
Strategies that work
- Explore before you read the mark. The side pockets hold oil and runes worth points, and the timer for the speed bonus only starts when you enter the chamber — so the fastest route is to sweep the cave first and solve second, not the other way round.
- In the rune wheels, when a tap moves the wheel and one neighbour, set them left to right and the last one falls into place. When a tap moves both neighbours, count instead: every wheel needs a certain number of taps and the order does not matter, so work out the counts before you touch anything.
- In the dark maze, shout before every step. A shout is free and a step is not; the four numbers tell you exactly how far the corridor runs each way, and the glow is always in the top-right corner. When the compass is reversed, say the opposite direction out loud before you press it.
- For the water in the rock, two ears at opposite corners are enough. The number is a distance counted along the grid, so the two readings fix a single square. Do not spend listens walking towards it one stone at a time.
- On the crossings, count the geysers before you move. The number on a vent is the ticks until it erupts and a move is one tick, so a 2 is safe to cross now and a 1 is not. Waiting is a move too, and it is often the right one.
A little history
Jules Verne published Voyage au centre de la Terre in 1864, when geology was young enough that going down a volcano to see for yourself did not sound like fantasy to everyone. The book is built as a sequence of obstacles, each of them a small problem with a physical answer — read the cipher backwards, wait for the shadow, listen for the water, count the compass wrong — and that is what makes it playable a century and a half later: the difficulties were puzzles to begin with. Saknussemm keeps the order of the book and takes its liberties where Verne took his. The expedition never reached the centre; the game does, because a descent that ends by being thrown out of Stromboli is a novel, not a game. Arne Saknussemm, the alchemist who signed the runes, is Verne's invention, and the Latin sentence the game takes its motto from is the one he left carved at every turning.
Frequently asked questions
How long does it take?
Between one and two hours for the thirty chambers, and it saves after every one. It is meant to be played over several sittings, like a book — which is also why it has no daily challenge: a daily challenge is for a coffee break, and this is a journey.
I cannot find the mark.
It is a carved stone that glows when you are near it, and the lantern only lights what is close. Walk the walls of the chamber; the mark is never on the straight line between the way in and the stair, so look in the parts of the cave you would otherwise skip.
Are the puzzles the same for everyone?
Yes. The whole world and every puzzle in it come from one fixed seed, so two players see the same thirty chambers and the same thirty answers. The only randomness is the dust in the lantern light.
How faithful is it to the book?
The order of difficulties is the book's, from the cryptogram in Hamburg to the blocked gallery and the rising water. The puzzles are the game's own; Verne did not write a rune wheel. Where the story is told, it is retold in the game's words, not quoted.
