The Finders Commission
In The Finders Commission, you play as one of the members of the eponymous group, a euphemistically named band of thieves-for-hire. You’ve been hired by the goddess Bastet (or maybe just a regular talking cat) to steal an artifact belonging to her out of a museum. You navigate the museum exhibits, in the process avoiding police officers, creating distractions, entering various codes, flirting with a guard for information, and so on, all in preparation for the moment when you finally take Bastet’s aegis from its case. There seems to be no way to fail at this, but you receive a score at the end grading how well you pulled it off.
As this description might suggest, in a case of convergent evolution, the gameplay here is rather similar to the heist sections of Lady Thalia, which makes it a bit awkward to comment on due to the bias involved. That is to say, I think it’s a very solid foundation for a heist game, but of course I would think so. In any case, barring a few bugs and one puzzle that seemed somewhat opaque (which I’ll detail below), I think the structure was largely implemented well here. Nothing is really that difficult to figure out, but there’s some challenge involved in fully exploring the museum and finding all the things that you can do.
That said, the writing was a little spare for my tastes. The prose consists of terse sentences with minimal variation in structure; many rooms lack sensory detail, and not much characterization comes through either. It’s very much a straightforward recitation of a list of facts. If the gameplay were more complex, that might have been enough to carry the game, but as it is I think it could stand to be punched up a little.
Also—I don’t want to be told that the detective “could be a friend or maybe even a lover” if the two of you were on the same side of the law. I want to see that tension between them; I want to feel the star-crossed chemistry for myself. (I mean, again, of course I would, but.) Even though they don’t interact, this could still be demonstrated through how the PC thinks about the detective and what they notice about him. Obviously this is a trope I enjoy, but I’d like to think this isn’t just about me wanting to see more of it in general; if you’re not going to make the player feel the gulf between the two characters and genuinely regret that it’s impassable, why even bring it up?
You can choose to play any one of a number of different Finders, who apparently have different strengths and interests, but as far as I can tell, the only difference this made in the game was to the three-sentence description of what you do with your morning before heading to the museum. This seems like a bit of a wasted opportunity for greater variation in both narration and gameplay actions available.
I could see an expanded version of this game, or a sequel, becoming something I would very much enjoy, but as it is there’s not quite enough there for me to become fully invested.
Bugs and issues
- When I looked at my satchel in the arts district, hitting “Continue” took me back to the starting area instead of to the arts district.
- On my first playthrough, when it finally came time for me to take the aegis, the “Open Case” option (which I had not selected previously) had somehow disappeared. Selecting the cylinder from the satchel still worked, but it was impossible to disable the alarm, and I had to brute-force the code to open the case.
- I was a little confused by the camera puzzle. In-universe, it should be easily possible to glance at the screen and see whether the camera is pointing at the aegis or not, but I saw no option for that on either playthrough. Also, given that the camera is in the same room as the aegis rather than having line of sight from an adjacent room and is not described as being in a particular cardinal direction from the case, there seems to be no way to logically figure out which direction it needs to be pointing in order to not be aimed at the case. I pointed it in a random direction, and when I got back to the aegis room I no longer got the message about the camera watching me, so I assumed that must have worked, but in the score breakdown at the end I was told I had been caught on camera. I am not sure whether this was a bug where something was not showing up that should have been or whether I just missed something about the puzzle.