The Den

Let us imagine that puzzley choice games can be separated into two categories – yes, yes, this is an oversimplification even on its own terms, and requires arbitrarily saying that stat-based things like the Choice of Games offerings or Fallen London-style quality-based narratives present “challenges” rather than “puzzles”, but come on, let’s just go with it, two categories: you have your parserlike games that, well, mimic parser games by adopting granular, often compass-based navigation through a modeled world, usually with a persistent inventory and a point-and-click style “choose the verb, then choose the noun” interface; and then you have your escape-room-y games that rely on things like solving codes to reveal combinations that unlock doors or abstract minigames that ape classic puzzles.

There’s a lot that’s well done about the Den, but one of the things that’s most interesting to me is the way it deftly hybridizes these two approaches and winds up with a best-of-both-worlds situation. As you guide a pair of teenagers through their exploration of the high-tech bunker where a mysterious figure is protecting or perhaps imprisoning them, you’ll hoover up every portable item you can find and get very familiar with deactivating fans to enable you to crawl through ventilation ducts, but you’ll also largely do so via a fast travel system putting the whole expansive map at your fingertips, and for every USE X ON Y puzzle, you’ll find yourself doing a round of a streamlined Wordle variant. It doesn’t seem like it’s doing anything especially innovative, but this cannily designed interface makes what could have felt like a dauntingly large, tricky game a breeze to play.

Not that this is a lighthearted story by any means. The situation both inside and outside the bunker appears to be bad, with a series of earthquakes threatening the Den’s systems while the hints of backstory you come across via computer hacking suggesting that life on the surface isn’t a picnic any longer either. Fortunately, the two leads aren’t the type to sink into a funk; early on, you gain the ability to switch at will between Aiden, a practical whiz who occasionally breaks the rules from being a bit irresponsible, but might not be ready for larger rebellion against the system that’s raised him, and Vee, his driven yet compassionate counterpart. They’re both broadly drawn, but these are YA archetypes for a reason – the functional yet effective writing does a good job of getting across their distinct, appealingly-plucky personalities:

"He eventually smashed into the base of the shaft, leaving a large dent in the metal floor. Incredibly, apart from a few scrapes and bruises, he survived unscathed. He took great gulps of air and tried to calm the rush of adrenaline. He started to giggle, which seemed to him the strangest of reactions. He felt giddy. This was stupid, and terrifying, but hadn’t he wanted an adventure?"

I also enjoyed the way that the story tips its hand, using an early unexpected POV shift to foreshadow that the truth behind the Den is more nuanced than just the standard authoritarian dystopia. The backstory you uncover winds up being surprisingly grounded, and even involves some low-key social comment.

For all that the narrative elements are solid, this is first and foremost a puzzle game, and the set of challenges on offer here are quite good. The aforementioned Wordle riff is just as fun as its inspiration, and right as I was starting to get a little impatient with playing it over and over, the game offered a shortcut enabling me to skip past it when it came up in subsequent challenges. The inventory puzzles are all logical without feeling trivial – the extended set of actions you need to take to recover your lost screwdriver are especially satisfying. The parceling out of gameplay between the two leads is also well paced; you can ping-pong back and forth to run down a particular puzzle chain, or decide instead to bear down with a single character and work through a substantial chunk of progress before having to swap back. And the game escalates its challenges alongside its narrative: the climactic sequence creates a real feeling of mastery, as it prompts you to use what you’ve learned to allow Aiden and Vee to collaborate (albeit in occasionally implausible ways that had me wondering whether they had an ESP connection) and escape the Den at last – or indeed, not, as rather than a linear sequence of puzzles there are actually story-based decisions to make along the way, too.

This commitment to engaging the player and making sure they’re having a good time is all over this thoughtfully-designed game; the only real misstep I can point to is the decision to implement conversations between the two leads as a diegetic hint system, which meant I felt like I had to forego fun character interaction to avoid spoiling the enjoyable puzzles. The Den is scrupulous about making sure most players will find something to like, and smoothing away the edges that might create undue friction – it’s also quite generous, culminating in a wealth of fun post-game extras that put a lovely cap on proceedings. The ending also includes a request not to spoil the plot, which is why I’ve stuck to describing the situation in general terms; suffice to say the story is of a piece with the rest of the Den, executing standard tropes at a very high level while throwing in a few bonus grace notes. This is a real gem, and a game I wouldn’t be surprised to see launch imitations, perhaps eventually even a mini-genre, of its own.