(Courtesy of the randomizer: the second consecutive game featuring reptilian aliens)
65 | BUREAU OF STRANGE HAPPENINGS
65 | BUREAU OF STRANGE HAPPENINGS
by: Phil Riley
Progress:
- At the 2-hour mark, I timed out. It’s really hard to say how far I got, but I was wandering around in a labyrinthine town in the 1950s trying to collect items to do… something. Really specific, I know. I would guess I was at most, halfway through, and probably less than that.
Things I Appreciated:
-
I thought this had a lot of wacky and interesting game mechanics. One of the most cursed puzzles I solved was an absolutely miserable time wandering around in a seemingly infinite hyperdimensional plane, and I feel like I wasted a lot of time just doing that. But, it was extremely satisfying to finally make sense of the puzzle and work out what I had to do. Unfortunately that’s the only major puzzle that I’ve solved, since most of the rest of the game has been collecting objects that will eventually go together. But of what I played, I feel confident that the rest of the puzzles will be similarly engaging.
-
I enjoyed the absurd dialogue in the game. The responses you receive from characters are varying degrees of useless, but in an entertaining way that can still direct you toward a new objective. Overall, the writing in this game is very polished and tonally consistent.
-
As far as I can tell, the entire game is a meta-joke about needing to solve the entire game to solve the tutorial puzzle to answer the phone. The game presents answering the phone as the first thing to do, but leads you further and further away from being able to do it. I kept thinking, whenever I was stuck with something else, am I being ridiculous here? Do I need to be focusing on getting a watch, so I can trade it for money, so I can get a screwdriver, so I can open a vent, so I can disassemble a desk, so I can answer a phone? Why am I trying to construct an arcane machine in the past instead of looking for the watch? I think I’m just more used to games that have a more self-contained tutorial puzzles, and the game preys upon that expectation to create a lot of humorous moments.
Feedback/Recommendations/Questions:
-
Based on the cover art, going into the game I was like, oh, I’m going to be playing as a lizard person/reptilian. That’s interesting! I wonder how having reptilian features will affect navigating the world. Will I need to use a tail to interact with objects? Taste things with a super sensitive tongue to gain key information? Then I started the game: “An agent of the Bureau of Strange Happenings. Dark hair, dark eyes, and a dark sense of humor.” Okay, well never mind then! I guess that’s reason #10,000 why I shouldn’t read too much into front matter
I mean I still enjoyed the game quite a lot, but now I kind of want to see a parser game featuring some kind of lizard-like protagonist that does those things. -
This game has a unique hyperspace system where there are new directions (back and forth) that intermingle with the others. This was mostly fine and interesting, but I question the wisdom of choosing words, especially “back,” that are in common usage when writing normal directions. When I got deeper in the game, I started getting tripped up by descriptions like: “There is also a back entrance onto the park to the north.” Well is it back, or is it north? Is it a back entrance or is it a back entrance? Maybe it would’ve been better to make up your own terms, or use ana and kata to more fully differentiate hyperspace directions. Otherwise, trying to eradicate other uses of a common word like “back” seems like it would be annoying to implement.
-
I found the layout of the Enigma Lake town incredibly unintuitive. I’m not sure why, but even after spending around 40 minutes or so there, I was still getting confused by the streets and I could not envision where I was relative to anything else. It feels too densely gridded, relative to the amount of buildings you can actually access. I’m guessing this has something to do with the mechanic of wandering reptilians that teleport you away if you approach them, but overall it felt like this area could be significantly restructured for geographic clarity. I think if I had spent another hour there, I probably would’ve eventually gotten used to it, but I found myself bogged down by navigation and unable to progress the actual puzzles as a result of that cognitive burden.
-
There was a puzzle about entering the portal to the past that I found unintuitive. I had read the note before giving it to Doris, so I knew what the code was. I had also been given my mission and told the time and place I was going to, so I wasted a lot of time trying to input the code, input the year, try to get a code from the weirdly evasive Maggie when that didn’t work. When I finally asked the game for a hint, the hint was “talk to Doris,” which I had already done, extensively. That did turn out to be the solution: for some reason, the game needed me to talk to him even more times than I already had for the portal to become active. I think it would’ve been a lot more intuitive if he gave me the recall button and activated the portal the moment that he tells you where and when you’re going. Something about this sequence didn’t connect for me.
What I learned about IF writing/game design:
-
A unique feature of this game is its hyperspace geometry. It sounds disorienting—and it is!—but the game is well-crafted enough that for as intimidating as four-dimensional movement seems, you are nonetheless given enough clues to make sense of it. I think there’s a value in building puzzles around a game mechanic that’s disruptive to a genre fundamental (in this case, the standard compass) as a major conceit. It gives your game a distinctive flair and is engaging to the player to have to think more about how the new mechanic can be used to accomplish tasks. Similarly, making a screwdriver an (apparently) unreachable endgame MacGuffin, rather than a fodder tool for an early puzzle like it’d normally be used for.
-
I thought this was an interesting example of taking a very banal setting (a run down strip mall → a run down suburban town) and making it seem weird and interesting through plot and game mechanics.
Quote:
- “I’m Maggie. I’m the receptionist here at the BOSH Hyperspace Field Office. I’m here to help you with whatever you need, as long as it’s not touching the control panel.”
Lasting Memorable Moment:
- When I finally escaped the endless hyperspace plane, I typed “THANK GOD LOL THAT WAS HORRIFIC” into the interface. Not because it was actually horrific, but I was just so satisfied that I had actually figured out what to do and wouldn’t be condemned to wander here for the rest of the 2 hours.
DemonApologist_BoSH.txt (322.0 KB)