Operative Nine

Long ago, in a review of Zombies (1999), I wrote:

I was struck by the way this piece is framed -- it made me think about the possibilities of throwing a mini-game like this into the midst of a standard IF work... In this case, the game is turn-based, which might work with the "stop-and-think" nature of IF instead of against it.

In all likelihood, Arthur DiBianca, author of Operative Nine was completely unaware that the above statement existed. It nonetheless pleases me to see that the idea -- one that far exceeds my own technical ability -- actually had merit.

This is another limited parser game by DiBianca, who is one of the most prolific (if not the most prolific) authors in this functional subgenre. As he once explained in a short interview, one of the reasons that he likes to use the limited parser format is that it makes his games more accessible to those new to parser IF. His experiments have consistently proven that limiting the options for player input in no way limits the amount of fun that the player can have.

In a limited parser game, the reduced instruction set available for commands generally keeps the search for a solution short enough to maintain a brisk pace, which produces a fundamentally different feel to these as compared to traditional parser works. The simplified solution space also creates a fundamentally different basis for effective puzzle design -- the author must figure out how to anticipate (or create) gaps in the player's intuition and require solutions that don't seem obvious even when they are plainly in view, metaphorically speaking.

When done right, the solution eventually comes to the player like the flash of insight informing a clever geometry proof. Failing this ideal result, the author can at least be certain that the brute force work to discover the solution is manageable. DiBianca is especially gifted in hitting that "just right" mark, and in anticipating just how far to take things before boredom and/or frustration set in. As someone who generally dislikes pure logic puzzles, I admire DiBianca's skill at dressing these up in mini-games that make solving them feel like play instead of work.

Although this game at first seems like something in the spirit of Spider and Web, DiBianca's playfulness comes through in short order, and the player will quickly discover that the only significant actions to be performed are moving around and playing the mini-games presented through the "PQ-807 microcomputer" available from the start. A tutorial game shows one the ropes, and then the first puzzle (opening a door) must be solved.

DiBianca's inventiveness is on display here as he deploys about a dozen different mini-games ranging from simplistic to devilish in difficulty. I didn't have to consult any hints to reach the end, but I did get through one or two of the puzzles only via what felt like blind luck in stumbling onto a solution.

Someone who loves logic puzzles could probably fly through this game in 30 to 45 minutes; I lost track because I was having too much fun to pay attention to the clock, but it felt about the regulation two hours. I was especially glad to see that the penultimate puzzle (Spoiler - click to show)actually consisted of several different mini-mini-games combined into one challenge, since the difficulty had only been increasing until that point. (Among DiBianca's many talents is an excellent sense of pacing.)

This game is solidly fun, and I give it extra points for breaking new ground -- something that grows ever-rarer in an art form now in its fourth decade. With any luck, Operative Nine will inspire similar experiments in the future.

I tend to like the sparse humor in DiBianca games. It's particularly evident in Operative Nine where you, with your trusty PQ-807 microcomputer, LINK to various things in an attempt to infiltrate and upset the Agency, who are a step ahead of CAMFOR. It's unclear who the good guys or bad guys are. This provides, for me, part of the amusement. You are just doing stuff. There's no great evil to repel or instigate. You just have a list of tasks: put lethargex in the ventilator system, or replace the dossier on Person 372 with a fake one. None of this is done via inventory management.

Instead, the hacking has small mini-games where you, as a pair of @'s, run around. If you’re lost, step on the ??'s. Many of the early ones have Sokoban-style logic. There are boxes, 2-wide, to push onto pairs of brackets. Later, there’s a copycat logic puzzle. You have one puzzle where you move, say, four things around with arrows, though if one hits a wall, it doesn’t move. The brackets are in an odd formation, so you have to figure out where to put things. There’s a conveyor belt (the text graphics are particularly nice here) and even a timed puzzle where you have to cut a fuse. That was probably my favorite one once I solved it, because the seemingly most intuitive and direct way wastes a precious turn or two, and the bomb goes off. I solved it with zero turns left. Fortunately, in all the games, you can reset with an R at any time, even if you’re only trapped in a no-win situation e.g. a dead end in a two-level maze. In puzzles with multiple levels, you don't go back to level one if you fail. I enjoyed bashing into walls in an "avoid traps in the darkness" puzzle. The various different text scenarios are rather jolly especially for how abstract they are. Some are even a bit whimsical with the author showing off things he can program, like a quasi-hide-and-seek crowd-pleaser where you mow someone's lawn and search through a hedge.

There's the usual learning curve, including a tutorial (LINK MODULE in your inventory) that's kind of hard to bungle but quite fun for all that. The other inventory items are similarly useless to you except as accessories that help complete your objective once you solved the abstract puzzle. Then they vanish. I made the (sort of) mistake of just opening all the doors I could going north, so I wound up going doing some of the harder puzzles first and missing easier ones. So, with several things to do on my list, I was wondering just how hard it would get! I felt silly when I backtracked, even as I solved things pretty quickly. The last thing I did actually involved using the EXAMINE command on something that wasn’t really hidden. I’d been pointed to the right room. There was just a "X of Y" and I kept examining the Y not the X. Maybe the tougher puzzles fried my brain.

The humor is quick and effective. Since you’re a spy, you don't have time for long chats once something works, and your boss, who speaks through your earpiece, doesn't either. Often the stuff that’s left out is what’s really interesting, as the dialogue makes you say "Wait, what about ..." and there are several different possible amusing reasons why We Don’t Talk About Such Things In This Business.

I have theories why this didn't place as highly as usual. I think perhaps the puzzles were puzzlier than usual, which worked great for me, but not so great or others. I really like ones where you can step back and eliminate possibilities before diving in if you're careful, and I'd like to see more of them. But of course they're frustrating if you don't have that initial insight. Another problem might be, some were really long, and while you could reset, you couldn't save in-game as Inform didn't offer saves between parser moves. I made a few finger slips myself when I knew what I wanted to do, and I had to start all over. This was okay back in the 80s, and it's okay with an emulator where you can save states, but I did get a bit frustrated when I was almost all the way done, and I imagine it's tougher for people who feel less comfortable in such situations.

Such state saving is not trivial especially for the puzzles with moving pieces, and it'd require some grindy testing, but it seems worthwhile for a post-comp release. Perhaps another reason was, it just wasn't most people's sort of shuffling things around. I was able to sit back and appreciate some of the logic or logic jumps pretty quickly. I am a more experienced Sokoban player than can really be healthy, so the wrinkles added to successive puzzles felt quite fun. I enjoyed the conveyor belt puzzle as well. The trickiest one was the copycat puzzle where you started with one percent-sign to move into place, then two, then three, then four. Organizing them spatially was tough, but the key was to hit one against a wall (inner or outer) to straighten them all out. Another puzzle had four pins to move up and down, where pushing one moves another up and down, and I avoided moving them against the edge until I did some arithmetic to prove that you needed to push a pin against the upper or lower wall.

Operative Nine is simple to understand and to get going, and the variety of mini-games kept me happy. However, I can see how someone might get really stuck on one, if this isn't their thing. I think also there could be a few hints as to how and why solutions work, beyond your boss saying "keep at it," especially for the final puzzle in a set of four. Perhaps you could trigger an option to tell you you're on the right track, or if you made things unwinnable. This feels like user-friendliness, though.

I often leave Arthur DiBianca's games to the end as a treat, but I decided to play this one early as part of my effort to play longer IFComp games.

You play as a hacker with a device that lets you hook into any system that has a certain kind of computer component. Your goal is to infiltrate a building and wreak havoc on an Agency, following a list of objectives. I'd definitely take inventory first in this game!

This game took me 2 hours, with 1 hour for a single puzzle (one of the last ones) and 1 hour for all the rest put together. I also ended up using the walkthrough for that puzzle.

This game is a limited parser game where all puzzles involve moving a character around a screen. There are a variety of mini-puzzles, although almost all have blurred in my mind after the time spent on that one puzzle. Many of them require optimization, memorization, and experimentation. Gameplay is closer to Baba is You or Adventures of Lolo than standard interactive fiction gameplay. This is a series of graphical games written in Inform connected by an interactive fiction overworld.

Some of the subgames involve clever gimmicks that require some sideways thinking. Others can become tedious; one such game was a game where you have to memorize a map before navigating it in the dark, with any mistake sending you to the front. The first few of these were really fun, while the last few felt like homework with copying down lists of commands.

One of the very last puzzles had a countdown timer based on moves, and that's the one I spent an hour on. It's an optimization puzzle with a very large set of parameters. I attempted it from a lot of different mental angles, trying different strategies and approaches. I often got within a single move or two of the finale, after shaving off ten or twenty moves from my first approach. In the end, I followed the walkthrough, and there were just a few moves off of my approach.

I think most of the game was pretty fun, and I enjoyed the final door puzzle especially.