Bureau of Strange Happenings

(I beta tested this game)

Pretty much every geek of a certain age, I will confidently assert, had their hearts broken by the X-Files. For a respectable chunk that’s because of the way they botched the Mulder/Scully relationship in the later seasons, but for the larger portion it’s because of the way the originally-compelling “mythology” story arc that spanned the show’s full run, which promised revelations about alien colonization, high-level government conspiracies, a mysterious mind-controlling oil, UFO abductions, and more, eventually petered out with the saddest of sad trombones as it became clear the writers had no idea what they were doing and were forced to make up more and more stuff whole cloth as the show somehow kept failing to get canceled (admittedly, I haven’t watched the latest revival seasons, so maybe they actually fixed all this and it did reach a satisfying ending? [googles] yeah looks like that’s a no).

Points, then, to BOSH, for being an X-Files homage that’s unapologetically and intentionally built as a shaggy-dog story. Soon after Agent Larch Faraji reports to their paranormal-investigation-unit’s new strip-mall headquarters, they realize that their new cell phone is ringing; unfortunately, said phone is in a desk whose key has been lost, and while the desk is one of those IKEA numbers that should be easy to disassemble, the only Allen wrench around fell down an air-conditioning vent… in most other puzzley parser games, unearthing the screwdriver to pop open the vent to pop open the desk to answer the phone would be a simple puzzle marking the close of the first act and getting you the infodump necessary to start the plot in earnest. But despite a few tantalizing teases – surely the pawn shop next door has a screwdriver? Or scraping together enough money to buy the one in the convenience store shouldn’t be hard, should it? – that drawer is going to remain inviolate through the game’s fourish hour running time, with Faraji successively having to engage in some light breaking and entering, master interdimensional hypergeometry, conduct an eldritch ritual, and out-fight a band of lizardman assassins (lizardmen assassins? The Chicago Manual of Style is less helpful on this point than I’d like it to be) on a cross-time rescue mission that’s important in its own right, I guess, but mainly just serves to get you that $#%@ screwdriver.

I admire the chutzpah of this structural joke, though I hasten to add that BOSH isn’t all metatextual shenanigans at the player’s expense: while the opening runaround section is maybe a bit too long and involves a few too many challenging puzzles to fit comfortably into the Comp’s time limit, the meat of the game is a reasonably traditional and well-designed IF experience that delivers a large serving of satisfying puzzling, with some neat surprises courtesy of the aforementioned hypergeometry gimmick. And this is a lavish production beyond just its length; there’s an extended, interactive tutorial, robust hints, multiple characters with plenty to talk about, and very solid implementation that means you can poke and prod into every corner of the large, detailed locations without fear of breaking something. Meanwhile, the every-conspiracy-theory-you-can-think-of-is-true setting provides a lot of laughs, courtesy of the wry authorial voice, while still staying sufficiently focused that you can figure out how the particular subset of weirdness this game is concerned with is supposed to work.

Make no mistake, this can be a tricky game – though again, the hints are there – and I suppose I can see how for folks who are less enamored of shaggy-dog stories than I am, the opening hour’s hiding of the ball might be frustrating, so BOSH probably belongs on the list of Comp games better enjoyed once the Comp is over and the two hour time limit and FOMO about 66 other games has receded. But hey, we’re less than 72 hours away from the voting deadline, so there’s good news on that front – and even in its short-form, two hour version, it’s still more satisfying than the X-Files…