The game focuses on a milkmaid named Ruth, who lives on a remote farm called Calf Ledge, located atop a fjord in Western Norway in 1929. Left alone after the disappearance of her mother and the death of her father, she tends the cows and has a friend of hers come by to pick up the butter and cheese she makes to sell at the nearby town. However, times are hard, and her friend tells her that her butter is worthless now, as people prefer to buy margarine instead, although cheese is still in some demand. One night, Ruth is awakened by a mysterious sound. She gets up and finds her favorite cow Lykke missing from the barn. While searching for her, she stumbles on a strange salt rectangle that appears to glow in the dark. After saving her cow from drowning, she goes back to bed. The following morning, she is shocked to see a spaceship descend and abduct her cows. Ruth manages to get aboard and meets the blue-skinned aliens flying it, including Queen Amrita. Apparently, the Veda, as it's called, has been flying for centuries, trying to preserve the last of the milkbeasts. Unfortunately, the last bull has died long ago, so they're forced to use the Age Machine to keep the female beasts alive.
The game provides examples of:
- Action Girl: Ruth, of course. While on her farm, she prefers to wear her late father's pants, which she has altered to fit her. A visiting friend comments on the fact that she isn't wearing a dress (it's the 1920's, after all), but pants are more practical on a farm. She jumps on top of a spaceship without hesitation in order to save her cows and later reveals she knows how to ride a motorcycle.
- Air-Vent Passageway: Ruth takes one to get to Amrita's personal chamber.
- Alien Abduction: The aliens abduct Ruth's cows but don't bother with her. She jumps onto the ship herself to save them.
- Aliens Steal Cattle: In this case, to sacrifice cows' lifespan with an Age Machine in order to rejuvenate their few remaining milkbeasts, since cows are the only compatible animal.
- Anti-Frustration Features: Once the player has solved the Air-Vent Passageway maze puzzle to get to Amrita's chamber once, Ruth will automatically go back and forth through the vent without having to repeat the puzzle.
- Bittersweet Ending: Ruth defeats Amrita, restores everyone's youth, and flies away with the aliens as their new queen, but Lykke dies while saving her.
- Chekhov's Gun: While saving Lykke from being swept up by the stream into a waterfall, Ruth has to loudly ring Lykke's cowbell to call her. She has to do the same while Amrita is trying to kill her to summon Lykke to save her.
- Distinctive Appearances: Of Ruth's four cows, only one is named (Lykke) and looks white with black spots, while the other three cows are all brown.
- Fantasy Counterpart Culture: The race of blue-skinned aliens is clearly based on Indian people and culture, as seen with their names, clothing style, vegetarian diet, worship of cow-like creatures, style of shrines and decoration, and even the writing appearing on the mechanic's blueprint.
- Floating Continent: A piece of the simulated landscape aboard the Veda is floating above the rest. A chunk missing under it implies it's a malfunction in the ship's Artificial Gravity.
- Generation Ships: The Veda has been flying through the galaxy for centuries, with many generations changing on board. Many of the systems are breaking down, necessitating frequent repairs and cannibalizing parts from other areas. The oracle also mentions that their numbers are in decline.
- God Save Us from the Queen!: Queen Amrita is quickly revealed to be the Big Bad, using the Age Machine to live for centuries, while draining her subjects for the slightest infractions (often by Moving the Goalposts). Amrita also drains Ruth's age, turning her into an old woman, but Ruth manages to restore her youth.
- Heroic Sacrifice: The cow Lykke saves Ruth at the cost of her own life.
- Hover Bike: Ruth can help the engineer repair one. She can then test-fly it. It proves crucial at the end to save the ship while its falling.
- I Choose to Stay: Ruth decides to leave with the aliens, after doing a final flyby of the fjord, her farm, and the cairn to her parents.Ruth: Old days, I must leave you behind.
My future is elsewhere, today I'm unconfined. - Just in Time: Ruth saves the ship moments before it slams into the fjord.
- Last of His Kind: The four milkbeasts aboard the Veda are the last ever, and they're all female. Additionally, there are less than 100 of the blue-skinned aliens left aboard the ship, and it's heavily implied they are also the last of their civilization after an unspecified cataclysm.
- Liquid Assets: The Age Machine can be used to transfer life energy between similar living things. For example, Queen Amrita plans to use Ruth's cows to de-age her milkbeasts, while herself using the machine to keep herself alive for centuries, while draining her subjects of their years. Ruth can also use it to ripen some fruit, while simultaneously turn a different rotten fruit back into a seed.
- Magic Staff: Amrita's staff has some strange powers, such as telekinesis and language teaching.
- Moon Logic Puzzle: The game is mostly good about averting this. Most puzzles have a reasonable or logical solution, or if it's a bit more obtuse, hints are given in the dialog. That being said, this is an Adventure Game, and there's a few examples:
- How do you steal Amrita's staff? Well, first you take a frog with a loud squeaky croak from the pasture, hide it in an alcove in a machine in the engine room, poke it with a needle from the seamstress' room so it will croak and make the nearby engineer thing the machine is squeaking, using up the last of the oil from his can and drop it on the spot. You then spike the ship's water supply with some drowsy weeds, then fill the oil can up with drowsy water from the fountain (you can't fill it up from any of the ship's other water supplies), then crawl through the vents and use the oil can to squirt drowsy water into Amrita's drink while it's in her hand, which she conveniently doesn't notice. Once she passes out you can lower a rope into her chamber and pull the staff out through the vent. I'm sure that was your first guess.
- During the final confrontation scene, the only way to defeat Amrita is to take advantage of her levitation she uses against you to, in quick succession, unscrew a pipe from the wall, put a seed in the cogs next to the pipe to stop them from spinning, attach a rope to one of the cogs, and attach the oil can to the end of that rope so that once it starts spinning again, the oil can will clang against the pipe and cause your cow Lykke to come running to what sounds like a cowbell and headbutt the queen.
- Moving the Goalposts: The seamstress is tasked by Amrita to make her a cape that easily floats behind her, but all the fabric is rough and thick. When Ruth helps the seamstress by giving her some lightweight fabric, she quickly makes the Queen what she asked for. Amrita then wonders why the cape isn't green, claiming it's unworthy of her stature and punishing the seamstress by draining her age further, sending her into a coma.
- Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: In order to get inside the ship, Ruth has to turn off a bunch of steam vents near the engine. This nearly causes the ship to crash later on, when the engine overheats.
- No Ontological Inertia: After Ruth forces Amrita to return all the years she has stolen from her subjects, the Queen crumbles to dust.
- Ominous Floating Spaceship: The Veda appears this way at first, slowly moving over the farm, scaring Ruth, then stopping over the cows, before sucking them in with a Tractor Beam.
- The Power of Love: When Ruth first tries to use Amrita's Magic Staff, she fails, and Amrita easily takes it back. After Amrita kills Lykke, the aliens tell her to use her love to wield the staff. It works.
- Shout-Out:
- To Monkey Island, when Ruth is trying to use the Magic Staff against Queen Amrita:
Queen Amrita: Your effort is lackluster,
stop waving it like a feather duster.- Similarly, one of the random questions Ruth can ask the Oracle is whether it's true that there's no money to be made in Adventure Games. The Oracle confirms that it's true, "unless your last name is Gilbert." This is a reference to Ron Gilbert, one of the creative minds behind some of LucasArts's most popular titles, the aforementioned Monkey Island games included.
- Simple Score of Sadness: The scenes on and around the farm are set to melancholic music to set the theme of loneliness. The soundtrack has been released on iTunes.
- Tranquil Fury: Ruth, after Amrita kills Lykke, whom Ruth has raised since she was a calf.
- Translator Microbes: One of the powers of Queen Amrita's staff is to make Ruth immediately able to understand her and her subordinates' language.
- Unusual User Interface: The library consists of a fountain called the oracle, diamonds appearing on the wall. The fountain is asked a question, and shines a light, with the librarian translating the response for the user.
