Your First Voyage

Nousfarer: The Idea Expanse is Noosaga’s 3D game of knowledge. You captain a palace that sails the Tree of Knowledge: every subject is a galaxy, every discipline a solar system, every subfield a planet with a city of Scholar’s Towers to climb. It is free, it plays in your browser, and you can start without an account.

Step aboard

Open Nousfarer. While the game loads, a painting of your ship fills the screen; the opening film follows: the camera circles the palace in space and flies through its great window to the throne room, where your captain walks to the throne. Hold E (or hold a finger on the screen) to skip it.

A new captain then chooses a look in the character creator. You can change it any time in the dressing room aboard.

Your first steps

A plaque at the top of the screen walks you through the ship, one step at a time:

1. Look around and walk: the plaque ticks off each direction as you try it.
2. Find the Nousdex, the great bookwheel in the palace museum, and open it.
3. Read the Lion Man and answer its question to collect it.
4. Set it on a pedestal in the museum.
5. Walk to the dressing room and try the character station at the mirror.
6. Speak to the Copilot’s owl in the throne room and choose an expedition.

You never have to search: a gold light floats over the next place, a trail of light runs along the floor toward it, and when it is out of view a gold pin at the edge of the screen points the way with its distance.

Choose where to go

The world follows the Atlas’s structure:

In the game	In the Atlas	Example
Galaxy	Category	Natural Sciences
Solar system	Discipline	Physics
Planet	Subfield	Classical Mechanics
Scholar’s Tower	Framework	Newtonian Mechanics
Storey of a tower	Concept	Momentum

Sit on the throne to open the astrolabe, a hologram of the Tree of Knowledge. Choose a galaxy, then a solar system, then a planet, and set course.

The Astrolabe & Voyages explains the journey from there to the landing field.

On a planet

Meet the Planet Guide by the landing field: their briefing introduces the subject and opens the city gate. Inside the city, each Scholar’s Tower holds one framework of the subject; climb it storey by storey, reading each concept and answering its guardian. Planets & Cities and Scholar’s Towers cover both.

Accounts and saved progress

Sign in from the menu to keep your progress with your account: mastered storeys, crowns, your Nousdex and your look. A tower’s storeys are prepared for signed-in captains; as a guest you can explore the ship and the cities and read each tower’s framework in its hall.

Where next

• Controls & the Screen: every key and touch action, and what the plaques mean.
• Your Palace Ship: the rooms aboard and what each one does.
• Copilot & Expeditions: let the owl plan a route through a subject.
• The Nousdex & Museum: collect artworks and show them aboard.
• Troubleshooting: if the game is slow or will not start.