20 Exchange Place by Sol FC
TLDR: A combustive concept (high-stakes hostage negotiation). This isn’t stated in the materials but I take it it’s inspired by the 2006 movie Inside Man, where a combination heist & hostage negotiation occurs at a bank of the same address.
Gamemechanical notes: No parsing. Player choices are highly impactful in how the plot develops. No “undo” etc. so failure generally means starting from the beginning.
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- Top tier concept, I found it very compelling and interesting and it motivated me to keep trying past my first ending, which I don’t always feel called to do.
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The writing is uneven (e.g., references to the player character switch between “you” and “I”). The player character is inconsistently characterized, switching suddenly between an attitude arrogant a sort of “oh, I’m so incompetent” (neither of which is how I characterize aseasoned hostage negotiator?). (OK, to be fair, some of the incompetence is on me.)
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I couldn’t deduce the “correct” choices from either the description text, or common-sense knowldege, so it felt like I was clicking arbitrarily
One-third of a walkthrough:
For those who, like me, got pretty invested in the ending but found some of the choices unintuitive: I stopped after I found an ending where you save the hostages. I’m not sure if there’s a “better” ending—the description text suggests the player character is unhappy about not catching the criminals, but in the movie the cops don’t catch the criminals so I wonder if it’s just impossible.
To get to that ending:
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Early choices don’t seem to matter much except you MUST choose to smoke before going into the command center (or else you will be so nervous during the phone call you are not even offered the “good” dialogue option).
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I chose “sneak in the back” then “wait 4 hours” for the tactical approach, didn’t exhaustively check the others
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During the 4 hour wait, the robbers will call you. At one point they refer to the cops doing perimeter assessments. You must choose “keep cool” (don’t reveal anything), which, as stated, is only offered if you smoked earlier
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Deliver the pizzas, no funny business
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Some plot point happens and you’re offered a choice – choose to go in immediately yourself, Die Hard style
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I took the window instead of the door, not sure if it matters.
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Either searching up or down will result in saving the hostages but not catching the criminals.