When you start Mu Cartographer, you will be greeted with a simple title card, then a screen with a cool topographical thing in the middle and a bunch of controls around the periphery. None of which is likely to make much sense to you on the face of it, except for the fact that there are words in that bottom left bit. That said, I recommend you poke at things on your own before you read any part of this guide that is in spoiler tags. This game is literally about poking all the things. That said, it can be very frustrating when you hit a wall in figuring things out by poking or have simply forgotten to poke a specific thing (as I did), thus the guide.

Basic Exploration Tips is general advice on how to go about playing, Local Attractions is a more in-depth set of instructions on how to use the controls and progress in the game, and Guided Tour is basically a full set of instructions and advice. Cheers!

The majority of the things on the screen affect the appearance and behavior of the terrain in the middle, and will be involved in working out what the heck is going on, or just being fun to play with.

You can work out what counts as a control group by right-clicking on it, which will pick it up and let you move it around the screen. Right-click again to drop it in its current location. You can move groups around to your liking, and finding out what goes with what can be quite useful in figuring out how they function.

As a freebie, I will tell you that the controls in the bottom right have to do with the in-game setup for screenshots and allow you to post screenshots to Twitter (if you log in). Armed with that information, poking should let you figure out what each of the controls in that group do.

You can poke at anything you like, but it is probably easiest to start with the rectangular bit in the bottom left. You will keep coming back to this repeatedly throughout the game. You can read the logs right off, or ignore them in favor of the words down below, your choice.

The logs themselves give you lore, and some of it can be useful in figuring out in a general sense what you are looking at, but they are non-essential, and I found it more fun to read them once I had gotten further in the game. As you select each one, however, you may notice that things change outside that rectangular UI element. Hm...

Look for anything on the controls that is marked out in blue.

Try to change the controls so that they match what's marked out in blue, or, in the case of one set of controls, try to increase the amount of blue stuff by changing the controls.

In this section, I will give you an idea of how each control actually works, so that you can use them. There will be a second spoiler tag after each one that gives more detailed information on what you are looking for when you use them, which I don't recommend reading unless you are entirely stuck.

In order to not give cross-control group spoilers, I am a little coy with some of the wording on these. If that ends up causing you problems, you can go to the next section for more clear advice on how to use things together.

This section holds the logs and the words that are, for some reason, attached to the logs. You should carefully click through the logs so you know which ones you have already seen the effects of and which you have not. The last section can be very useful once you figure out what it does, so see if you can work that out fairly early in your game.

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Each log has a word associated with it, as well as causing blue marks to appear on one of the other controls. Those blue marks are guides you should be following. The last section allows you to create named save states of the controls, which will become very useful when you have gotten a setting group you really like and want to be able to come back to. There is a bit of lore that provides a logical reason why this is part of the controls, and not something in the escape menu.

You can make various triangles with the three pegs, and some of the possible triangles have a useful effect. Don't worry, you don't need to brute force check every possible triangle like I did, as the game will provide you with hints as to which ones have useful effects.

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When you make one of the correct triangles, it will change the color palette of the topography in the center, along with another effect you can detect if you have activated the relevant controls. See if anything reacts when you change to a new color, especially for the first time.

This gauge will activate under certain circumstances, and indicates there is a certain number of something in the "vicinity". The pink in the middle is a button that causes a somewhat familiar effect to occur on the topography.

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This gauge tells you if there are white beacons to be found, and the button activates radar to allow you to detect them. Once you find one, look closely at it to see if there's anything worth interacting with.

This is your navigational control, plus the first of the controls I am mentioning that affects the shape of the topography. To start with, you will mostly want to poke at the bit at the right that looks like a compass and the slider to the far left.

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From left to right, the vertical slider is your zoom, the curved sliders affect the elevation of the topography (some up, some down, in patterns I find hard to predict), and the bit that looks like a compass controls the orientation of your view of the topography and your movement. Try pulling the dot at the center in a direction to see what happens, and watch the rest of this section when you do.

This affects the shape of the topography in major ways. The circle and dot at the left are an indicator, the circles with pink circles inside are controls. The pink circle at the right sets the rightmost dial to constant rotation. Note that only the rightmost dial can move a full circle.

This thing can become the bane of your existence if you haven't worked out the fourth tab in the rectangular bit with text, just so you know. When you are poking it in the right way to be useful in game progress, the indicator will do something, and gradually increase doing that thing. You will know when you have reached the required threshold because something will change on another control.

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The dials under the waveform adjust its shape. I find it most effective to adjust them in the order 4, 1, 3, 2. The fourth control adjusts the starting point of the wave, the first and third adjust the baseline and the wavelength of the wave, and the second adjusts the amplitude of the waves in an uneven manner, making some peaks more or less extreme.

If this hasn't done anything yet, you seriously don't need to worry about it. Read the More Details bit below if you are having difficulty once it has started doing things.

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Once you have gotten enough of the small dots, the larger dots will activate into buttons. poke them and see what they do. The big button in the middle is important to have active when you want to finish the game.

This is a minimap and controls that affect the topography in major ways. You can use these controls to make various changes to the topography. Poke at them to see if any of the changes you can make are useful or visually pleasing. Keep an eye out for anything else in the game that reminds you of these controls.

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This whole section of controls is related to symbols you might notice dotting the landscape, and which look conspicuously like the controls. The bit to the right of the mini-map is a gauge of how many of these symbols remain to be found, and whether there is one in the area the mini-map currently covers. Once you have one on screen, you need to adjust each of the three controls (diamond, spinner, and horizontal slider) until a corresponding symbol fully appears (they all nest, Deathly Hallows style), at which point you will want to look at the symbol on your topography.

This section just lays out how you do the various things without any attempt to prevent cross-referencing spoilers. If you read this, you will end up losing the entire aspect of exploring the mechanisms of the game, and will only have to actually operate the controls. There is still some challenge in that, but you will lose out on the discovery aspect of the game entirely. This isn't my play style, but everyone should be able to play however they like, so I'll write this anyway. This is set up as one giant spoiler tag so it won't be too annoying to read, with only the endgame in its own spoiler.

There isn't really a reason to do a standard walkthrough, as this game doesn't have a set sequence, so this is more of instructions on how to operate everything and what to do in order to access everything in the plot of the game.

For each log entry, you will receive guidance that will help you set a particular control to a significant configuration. The P.H.F. logs give you guidance on the pegboard, the R.R. logs give you guidance on the navigation controls, and the J.F. logs (which you don't have at start) give you guidance on the waveform controls. This sets the sequence of the game somewhat, but means you don't have to brute-force anything. All of the controls work via you clicking and dragging whatever the control part is.

Note: If you happen to see a moving object while zoomed all the way in, click on it before it moves on. It is unlikely that you will encounter it, and clicking on it provides a nice little Easter egg. You might want to screenshot the result before you move on.

All the controls available to you at the start of the game (except the screenshot controls) allow you to find little concentric circle objects, which I will call "Dots", that you click on to progress in the game. Most of them provide you with logs, while sixteen of them fill in the blank circles around the fractal flower in the top right, activating controls there, which are used in the endgame. The Dots associated with the pegboard and gauge are specific to the color palettes, while the Dots associated with the other controls can be found in any color palette. Moving the pink circle in the diamond control over near the top right to the center of the diamond can make it somewhat easier to find targets located using the other controls by making the world flatter, but as the world sort of flattens out as you zoom in, the terrain will not interfere with you actually clicking on things.

First, you will want to get used to the movement controls, which are located at the top left. You move your viewpoint around in the world using the small circle i call the compass. I find this easiest to keep track of when I have the pink triangle pointing up; you can drag the pink triangle and rotate it around, which also rotates your view of the topography. To move, you drag the center dot of the compass. The direction you pull sets direction of travel, and the distance controls speed. If you drag it and release, you will continue moving at the same speed and direction. The "clock hands" on the larger circle rotate as you move around the world; a particular orientation of the hands indicates a particular location in the world. With the arrow on the compass pointing straight up, moving down causes the small-circle hand to move clockwise, and moving left causes the large-circle hand to move clockwise.

The Dots associated with the navigation controls are associated with particular color palettes- they only show up when that palette is used, and once you have found them, you can move on to another palette. The gauge to the right of the pegboard will activate when you are in a palette that has Dots, and if you click the pink circle inside the curve of the gauge, it will activate a sort of radar ping that allows you to find them. As you move around the world, if the radar is active, the Dots will send up a beacon that flashes as a white spike of light, with an associated ping sound, and the tip of the zoom slider will blink blue in time with the flashes and sound. Once you find one, place it about a third of the way down from the top of your view, centered, then zoom in to be able to click on the Dot. For some reason, the camera overshoots the center of your view by a bit.

I got used to the coordinate system and searched for the beacons at the same time, by running a search pattern. First, move to the location where both of the hands on the coordinate wheel are pointing straight up. Then move straight down until the small-circle hand had done a complete circle. Then move left until the large-circle hand is pointing "northeast". Repeat the full circle down, then another 45 degrees left, and so on, until the hands are back at the top or the gauge says there aren't any more beacons to find.

While you are looking for the beacons, you can also look for symbols, which are activated using the controls on the right. You can find symbols in any color palette. Frequently, one part of the symbol will already be visible, so they are pretty easy to come across in the course of looking for the beacons. Even if a symbol is completely hidden (the settings are totally off for it to appear), the small circle to the right of the mini-map will turn blue to indicate there is one within the minimap area. Once you run across one, adjust the diamond, pointer, and horizontal slider controls until a diamond, teardrop, and horizontal line, respectively, appear in the symbol. You will know you have gotten a symbol right when it appears blinking blue on the minimap. The diamond can be a bit tricky- it works something like a coordinate system, so if only two sides of the diamond are appearing, move the dot diagonally to maintain those two dots and find the other part of the coordinates. When you have all three symbols, a Dot will appear in the center for you to click. Given how many times you will need to search for beacons, you can wait until you have found all of those before you really need to make effort to search for these spots. The vertical bar above the circle is a gauge of how many symbols remain to find. When you have found all of them, the grey fill in the dot below the gauge will have a white ring around it instead of filling the black circle entirely.

Once you get used to the movement controls, it is fairly easy to find the Dots associated with the blue guides on the coordinate wheel. Move to the location where the hands are in the right positions, then use the vertical slider and curved sliders to put the zoom circle and circles on the hands in the same position as on the blue guide. When you have everything right, the Dot will appear.

The waveform is the most complex of the controls. Each of the dials below the waveform affect the shape of the wave. I find it easiest to adjust them in the order 4, 1, 3, 2, but there will be some fiddling. You can also click the little pink circle to the right of the last dial to set it to constantly rotate, which I believe is included mostly as a feature of the sandbox use of the game. The fourth control adjusts the starting point of the wave, the first and third adjust the base curve and the wavelength of the wave, and the second adjusts the amplitude of the waves in an uneven manner, making some peaks more or less extreme.

Those controls will get you to the endgame.

Once you have found all of the Dots, you will have a set of new controls available in the fractal flower. The top button changes your view from angled to top-down, while the others create various surface effects on the topography. It is the center button that is the most important. It allows you to see the moving beings on the topography. Click on all three of them to get their final thoughts, and before you go, click on the Origin button in the Escape menu, which is activated after you find all three.

There are some things I noticed, and some things I have heard about in the forums that I find interesting about the lore of this game. For obvious reasons, spoiler-heavy.

Also, remember that you still have a cool topography toy even when you have finished the plot of the game.

The warning about moving critters is because there is definitely a fourth being in the map, possibly only in J.H.F. 09, and while it is a bit of a spoiler to even mention things moving, I don't want anyone to miss it if they happen to run across it. That is a being named Baak, and it has a thoughts screen just as the other three do. I have not been lucky enough to find it, but others have, as this discussion shows.

I noticed that some of the comments in the logs seem to relate to things I can do with the controls. The comment about it being hard to tell if something is an ocean or a mountain could be related to the diamond control, which allows you to make a given part of the terrain either sink deep or rise high, for example. I suspect there are more, and any additions to this guide will likely be of that nature.