Home: Marginalia
Start on Cara’s narrowboat on a golden canal evening: a calm place to learn the controls, poke through her life (the chessboard, the letter, the ducks named after her examiners), and try the phone before the expedition.
A third-person action adventure · in your browser
CARA
Ruins are just houses that have been patient.
Explore a hidden jungle valley as Dr Cara Holloway, archaeologist and climber. Then pick up the phone: call her, talk to her, and guide her by voice — “head for the river”, “what can you see?”, “climb that ledge”.
Voice uses Google’s Gemini Live with your own API key, stored only in this browser. How it works.
The Verdant Basin
A procedurally grown jungle: kapoks and palms, ferns, a river with a fallen-log crossing, cliffs to climb, a waterfall, and a stepped temple with a gate that only three Sun Stones can open.
Classic ruin-running traversal
Third-person camera, motion-captured animation, run, jump, mantle up ledges and cut stone blocks, swim the river, read stelae, solve the altar and descend the Sunken Stair.
Call her. Actually talk.
Cara has a phone. Ring it and she answers in her own voice, with her own history and opinions. Chat at camp, or during play, where she can act on what you say.
Voice-guided play
“Go to the temple.” “Look around.” “Inspect the stela.” “Jump.” She does it, tells you what happened, and argues if it’s a bad idea.
Meet the woman on the other end of the line
Bristol-born, Oaxaca on her mother’s side, PhD in water temples, walked out of academia rather than sign finds over to a collector. Talks to artefacts. Names her ropes. Says “Well.” before bad news.
Three steps to a phone call
- Get a Gemini API key at aistudio.google.com/apikey (free tier works).
- Press “Call Cara” here or on the phone in the game (P, then Call). Paste the key when asked; it stays in your browser.
- Allow the microphone and just talk. Prefer push-to-talk? Hold V (switch it on in Settings).