Graham Walmsley. 13th place, IFComp 2022.

A total popcorn thriller!

I’ve never read The Thirty Nine Steps by Buchan (or seen any film adaptations). The media that came to mind while playing was 1993’s The Fugitive; the highlands bit of 2012’s Skyfall; and Ludlum’s Bourne trilogy. After playing Graham’s game, I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that all of the above owe a debt to Buchan. This is low-tech high-mobility spycraft, which I quite enjoy.

The pacing is great. Right away we’re in trouble - there’s a dead body in our living room - and the pressure stays on throughout the story, with a constant pursuit by likely enemies culminating in a timed confrontation. This feeling of the chase and choices under pressure held my attention throughout; there’s a great arc to the experience however you play.

The prose didn’t really sparkle for me, but it’s clear and clean. “Remembered… remembered… perhaps… perhaps… unless” in this early paragraph bothered me a little…

I had always liked the chap, whose name I remembered as Scudder. I remembered he had mentioned a woman, Ondrea, who I assumed was his wife. Perhaps he had entered my flat to escape his enemies, perhaps to tell me something. It was too late now, of course, unless he had left something for me in the room.

…but it’s consistent and feels of-an-era, and it’s easy for me to believe that the Graham is emulating Buchan’s style here. For the most part the writing got out of the way of the story.

The other thing that came to mind while playing was Inkle’s 80 Days, another adaptation of a linear work into an interactive form. Both succeed in surfacing lots of interesting decisions. There’s a sound choice architecture here. A lot of choices are associated with one of three archetypes (open/clever/bold) that both informs the character’s rationale for the action, and apparently influences how the character sees the world in later text.

(BE OPEN) I went to the front door and rang the bell.
(BE CLEVER) I went around the back door, pretending to be a salesman.
(BE BOLD) I kicked open the front door.

The choices are frequent, significantly differentiated and fully acknowledged by the text. I explored a bit to see how far the story branches, and while you can’t really derail the plot there are some significant variations in how you get from point A to point B. There’s also lots of delayed gratification, with early choices (Did you shave? Have you been reading the newspapers?) showing up in later chapters. Their effects can be descriptive (if you didn’t eat breakfast, you’ll often be reminded that you’re hungry), tactical (your outfit might affect whether a lie is convincing to the local constable), or strategic (a good portion of your enemies’ motivations is opaque to you unless you find the book early in the game). Even better, they’re all the sort of espionage-fantasy I was hoping for. These are all spy-decisions, not just guy-on-a-trip decisions. There are good pocket puzzles, too, like how much you can do in the apartment within 15 minutes before you have to leave.

I’m less sure that I like the tutorial-ish text throughout.

This chapter has three different ways to play, depending on the way you enter the house.

These definitely make the work more accessible, but I found myself wanting to turn them off. Some of them lampshade side effects of your choices, both before and after the choice. There’s a “Clementine will remember that” quality to them: They initially boost the feeling of agency, but they quickly soured for me, feeling heavy-handed when the prose was already doing such a good job acknowledging my decisions.

To their credit, they did prompt me to play the last chapter through a few times (bravo for the easy links to restart a chapter) and I’m glad I did. There’s almost a Hotline Miami quality to this last chapter, which presents a dense cause-and-effect space to explore through multiple plays, and rewards you with lots of possible outcomes. There are secrets to uncover in the house, and an extra pleasure to replaying with some supernatural foreknowledge, trying to optimize for one thing or another. There are whole games built around this conceit (Use Your Psychic Powers at Applebee’s has some shared DNA) and using it as the climax of a longer game like this felt very satisfying.

I know there’s original music for this piece, but I had to play with the sound off, so I can’t comment on it. Sorry! :cry: I’m going to go back and listen to the soundtrack.

Overall, I thought this was a polished rollercoaster that’s found a sweet-spot for my taste in choice-based stories. Will definitely recommend to some folks!