Trouble in Sector 471 (Arthur DiBianca)
Played on: 8th October
How I played it: Downloaded and ran on Windows Git
How long I spent: 1hr 50mins to beat the game with 5/8 optional objectives
Trouble in Sector 471 is a two-hour puzzle-exploration game controlled by parser. The blurb offers few hints, but the opening minutes reveal that you are a robot dispatched to the Sector 471 space station(?) to exterminate the bugs wreaking havoc all over the place.
As much as I’ve enjoyed IFComp so far, it was very pleasing to see the randomiser serve up DiBianca’s yearly entry near the top of my list. DiBianca has a formula, which may sound like a backhanded thing to say, but it’s a good formula: a puzzlefest with a limited parser (that is, a lot of the verbs which come as standard in Inform games have been stripped out and the game is very specific about how you can interact with the world), a surprisingly-deep gameplay gimmick, an ending that can be reached in two hours, and maybe a little more for players who dig a little deeper.
This time, the limited parser itself is the gameplay gimmick. As a robot, you need to be upgraded to do your job. Several of the early puzzles are based around solving some problem in order to get some upgrade, which will add a new verb to your repertoire. Then you can roam around the map, testing your new verb and its effects and working out the implications of it. I’m saying “map” because a very helpful in-game map shows you where you need to explore, and it’s inherently satisfying to fill it in as you go. Trouble in Sector 471 sort of plays out like a Metroidvania; the world is constantly reconfigured and opened up as you realise “oh, now I can go back here and do this…” It’s a little like if Inside the Facility, one of DiBianca’s previous works, was a lot more condensed. The gameplay loop of getting a new verb and testing it on the old puzzles to make breakthroughs is really really fun.
(One small complaint about the limited parser here, which looks like a big complaint because it takes a paragraph to explain: I did miss having an examine command this time. It’s a fine design decision not to have to write descriptions for all the scenery, but there are some items whose purpose isn’t clear until you’ve looked closer, and that means picking them up and then checking the player character’s status. It adds an extra step, it leads to some awkward juggling since you can only carry one object at a time, and it means it’s not always obvious when certain items change to something more significant.)
The puzzles in the main path are all good and fair. There’s a surprising amount of variety, from timing puzzles to inventory-juggling puzzles to put-the-clues-together puzzles, but none of them are unreasonable. I needed a few hints to make sure I got to the end in two hours, and most of the time I looked at a hint I kicked myself for not putting the clues together. Perhaps the difficulty is a touch uneven in the main game – there’s one bug you need to exterminate which is much more elaborate and intricate to get than the others, whereas some endgame bugs turn out to be very simple – but on the whole it’s very smooth without being trivial.
There are a bunch of optional objectives too. I didn’t solve all of these (which means, judging by previous DiBianca games, that I definitely haven’t seen every secret Trouble in Sector 471 has), but I don’t mind that – I think purely optional stuff has free reign to be more difficult than the rest of the game. But I wish it was more obvious which puzzles are mandatory to earn necessary upgrades and which puzzles are sidequests. This won’t matter if you’re not playing under a judging time limit for IFComp, but as I was racing a clock to see the ending, it was annoying to spend time on a tricky puzzle and find out it didn’t get me closer to the end.
The story is pretty thin – it’s just an excuse to get you solving puzzles and blasting bugs, really. There’s usually something more substantial hidden in DiBianca’s games for people who can dig deep enough, and I know that there are mysteries I did not solve here. Still, there’s not much going on plotwise in the core game. But the NPCs are very charming, and manage to suggest that they have a life outside of the game with just a descritpion and a few lines of dialogue each. I’m fond of the robot who only exists to mimic other robots mockingly. I wouldn’t say this is an out-and-out comedy game, but it’s pretty funny – it’s mastered the art of disguising a puzzle contrivance as a goofy character or a silly bit of worldbuilding.
Trouble in Sector 471 is a very high-quality, very satisfying puzzle game. I love games like this. I can’t wait until the judging period is over so I can go back to this and spend more than 2 hours solving the extra puzzles and trying to figure out how to arrange those bloody pipes.