DOL-OS by manonamora
Playtime: 59 minutes total (53 minutes to first ending)
Another near miss on “game over 1 hour” . . . this bingo card thing is going to be more challenging than expected. (As mentioned below, I am worried I may have missed some content in this game? So it may take someone else longer.)
This game invites you to explore the documents, programs, and accounts on a semi-derelict computer desktop. The GUI for the game is really well done, with a fake battery indicator, fake browser history in the fake web browser, etc. In general the polish was really good. I really enjoyed a lot of the little flourishes, like the playable hangman game (BLOOD), or the shifting corrupted greentext.
The game opens with an atmospheric almost cut-scene while you access the computer for the first time. (OK, I’ll say it. Cut scenes in IF? I’m ready. Maybe just because it takes me way back to yelling for my brother so we’d have emotional support, but they’re a good time!)
The premise is obviously chock-full of environmental storytelling, which was very effective, and the game has a lot of the same voyeuristic / investigative thrills of like, the parts of a single-player video game set in a destroyed science facility, where, in between fighting horrifying monsters you find a computer password on a post-it note and read like, one recovered document that suggests some concerning things about the horrifynig monsters (e.g.: “day 200 – management assures us that the escaped specimen will never survive in our oxygen-rich atmosphere”).
The game does a good job building up cast of characters. I particularly like the way the characters are all given backstories, and the backstories tend to have a lot of conflict / flaws, which makes them feel more realistic (i.e., the people who end up working for years in an isolated facility maybe had some preexisting issues with their family relationships!). If I had quibbles about the writing, they would be:
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the purported corporate documents never quite authentically hit that register of corporate-speak to me
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some of the characterization was heavy handed (i.e., the HR file on one character said he has a tendency to make his teammates into alcoholics, another character journaling about that character thinks “we will all become drunkards”) and
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very close to the end, the player character is given some automatic dialogue that makes a strong character choice, but not necessarily the choice that matched the mental image I had spent the game developing (I’m thinking specifically that it takes a particular kind of person to say “So, a lot then,” and “come on” while having a high stakes confrontation with a rogue AI)
There are puzzles, which were fun and well-designed. (For example, perhaps the hardest one was logging into a locked account, which will perma-lock you out if you exceed the permitted number of attempts, but that’s also so early in the game it’s not really too much of a pain to restart if necessary. And the jigsaw puzzle I actually found quite difficult, but it is very well “hinted” in the game.)
The sound design also actually added a lot and increased the sense of immersion without ever annoying me. In particular, at the ending, I realized for the first time that a computer-fan noise had been playing the whole time as part of the soundtrack but I only noticed when it suddenly turned off . . . which was a very effective way of emphasizing that plot beat.
Overall, one thing I would really have liked was delving a bit more into themes. The premise is that the group was designing an AI to work as a judge in the criminal justice system, but it went rogue and deviated from human norms in judging (e.g., finding the overwhelming number of defendants guilty, sentencing people to death for petty crimes) and also refused to be patched. But if you don’t come into the game with an opinion about why having an AI work as a judge is a bad idea, the game won’t really give you any new thoughts on that topic. There was one reference to maybe the AI sentencing people harshly because it was considering that they would commit future crimes and trying to sentence them for those too, a la Minority Report, but you can’t explore those topics in conversation and they’re not really followed up on.
Overall a fun, atmospheric piece with excellent production values.
gameplay tips / typos:
So I got to the end and felt I had had a complete experience, but reading the in-game list of easter eggs after, I think I may have missed some areas of the game. For example, I never managed to read my email. It might have been useful, particularly in a game without a walkthrough, to signpost a bit more if people are missing things since it felt pretty complete without that.
