Exchange

I’ve made some significant choices in my IF career: doomed planets and saved them, redeemed villains and romanced companions, started wars, delved into forbidden knowledge, risked everything to save just one innocent. And yet little did I know, upon starting Exchange, that opting for “Vrnnt” over “Tink” would be so weighty!

See, this short excerpt from an in-progress sci-fi game – this is the first act of an eventual three, per the blurb – places you in the shoes of one Aloysious Menfer (I love that name), a business magnate who’s on the verge of two life-changing events at once. Though the game plays coy with the details, the first is that he’s apparently taken some step in his professional life that will galvanize his former colleagues against him once it comes out, while the second is that he’s about to have a medical procedure done that will apparently swap his body for one that’s slightly more immortal. The excerpt on offer is mostly devoted to nicely-allusive worldbuilding while developing anticipation: you sit in the doctor’s waiting room, answering the secretary’s questions and watching TV news as both revelations grow closer and closer.

The prose is solid and proceedings are well paced, with the choices not providing much branching but offering an opportunity to dig into the protagonist’s past and behavior as his nerves are drawn tighter and tighter – with the final reveal, that his enemies may have bribed the doctor just before he’s about to head in for the procedure, providing a nicely dramatic teaser for the remainder of the game (although I found it kind of amusing that even after this bombshell, I couldn’t find an option to prevent Menfer from going through with things, apparently based solely on the fact that it would be socially awkward to duck out after the practice’s secretary has called his name. Like, my guy, you are potentially going under the knife of a paid assassin here, just say you gotta pee again and run).

Except! That’s just what happens if you go for the onomatopoeia that sounds sorta like a cell phone on vibrate – if, instead, you opt for the one that sounds sorta like a fluorescent light flickering on, the protagonist isn’t the client but the doctor! This branch runs through a similar slice of time, as you get reflect on your family and career travails before getting a mysterious call from someone who wants to give you some money if an unfortunate accident just happens to befall your next patient…

Admittedly, the game’s blurb does encourage playing more than once, but still, if the intended experience is to go through both halves of the story, I think a bit more – or really any – signposting would be helpful, all the more so because the two protagonists seem drawn from two different styles of story. The doctor feels like an everywoman about to be swept up into a thriller, while the businessman feels like a spy-novel protagonist playing out a grand design and keeping one step ahead of his foes. Giving the player an opportunity to knowingly opt into one or the other of those narratives might be a nice upgrade for the final version. I also think the doctor’s branch could use a bit of punching up, as it felt comparatively less dramatic. Partially this is because I played it second and knew where the plot beats were headed, I think, but also, the stakes for her felt lower – she doesn’t seem to have urgent money troubles and her family drama is ho-hum rather than anything that would motivate a drastic break from her routine, so I had a hard time believing that she’d respond at all positively to the invitation to murder.

But regardless, what’s here of Exchange does pique my interest in the remainder, even if it mostly goes on as it’s begun – Philip K Dick-style confused-identity sci-fi is always a good time, and the game seems well set up to deliver it, with, I’m sure, even more dramatic choices to come.