Operative Nine
Arthur DiBianca
I am reminded of when Zarf implemented a LISP interpreter in Inform, entered it into IFcomp and gave you programming exercises in lieu of a game with the story being something about a genie. ‘Operative Nine’ is, similarly, a sokoban-like series of puzzles implemented in Gluxe in lieu of a game, with the story being something about a secret agent. As ‘interactive fiction’ the game fails, then, but also doesn’t try, and doesn’t pretend to be something it’s not (well, at least not after the first puzzle appears). As a puzzle game, it’s… reasonable? I found the puzzles to be kind of clever, but tended to overstay their welcome. Almost every time a puzzle series had more than one screen/objective, I found the second and later screens tedious.
I think I also found a bug where I solved the lights puzzle but didn’t accomplish the corresponding objective. And I gave up on the timing puzzle and the pass-phrase puzzle, so between those three things, I never saw the end.
Did the author have anything to say? Nope.
Did I have anything to do? Play sokoban.