I’ve always wondered what a Twin Peaks video game would be like. It would be mysterious, scary, darkly funny and trippy. I want to see this game happen. I want creepy game dream sequences. In the meantime there’s Telltale Games’ newest adventure/puzzle hybrid Puzzle Agent. So, the art style maybe doesn’t scream David Lynch but there are some definite similarities in the storytelling and absurdity of this game that make it Lynch worthy (even a creepy dream sequence!!). The story and visuals are really the strong suit of this game and make it worth playing. Sadly, the puzzle elements which make up the majority of the gameplay aren’t nearly as strong.
In their brief history as a studio Telltale has made some of best traditional adventure games in the past 10 years. Puzzle Agent is a very different game. While Sam and Max and Tales of Monkey Island rely on inventory-based puzzles to move the story forward Puzzle Agent’s puzzle integration bears more similarities to the Professor Layton games.
You play as Nelson Tethers who works for the U.S. Department of Puzzle Investigation. He’s like an FBI agent except instead of using investigative skills to solve crime he uses... puzzles. It’s pretty apparent from the beginning that Agent Tethers doesn’t get much work. But fortunately for the player there is a mysterious accident at the Scoggins Eraser Co., the official supplier of the White House’s erasers. When the FBI investigates all of the town’s problems seem to be puzzle-based. This is where you come in. Nelson is sent to remote Scoggins, Minnesota to find out what happened. He’s met by a slew of strange, funny and often sinister local characters. As the mystery unravels things get stranger and stranger. Let’s just say the majority of the mystery seems to involve a cult and gnomes. And not cute little photogenic gnomes. Not these are seriously creepy gnomes. I had nightmares. It’s amazing how scary cartoon gnomes can be in the hands of Telltale.
You can’t deny the originality and strangeness of the story but just as original is the art style. The characters and background all look like they are hand drawn. When there are close-ups of characters you even see the thick grain of the pencil lines. It’s a refreshing style that was inspired by the comic Grickle by Graham Annabale, the former Creative Director of Telltale. For Telltale’s first original intellectual property the style is easily recognizable, unique and just fun to watch.
For all these positives about Puzzle Agent there are some major drawbacks. The majority of the game is spent solving a variety of sometimes tricky but mostly fairly easy puzzles. As the story progresses you will find that Nelson needs to solve a puzzle in order to get a new lead, enter a new location or continue interrogating a suspect. For the majority of the game the placement and type of the puzzle make sense within the story and because of this there is a nice variety of puzzles throughout. For example, in order to unlock a new location, the player has to create a path with logs to guide Tether’s snowmobile to the new location. A completely different kind of puzzle is a logic puzzle that challenges you to determine the time of an explosion based on different suspects cryptic interviews. Unfortunately, some of the puzzles don’t fit quite as nicely. In the local town diner, you have to solve several puzzles in order to get suspicious townsfolk to speak to you. All of these puzzles felt tacked on and not particularly relevant to the story. In one case, you have to organize a characters bug collection in order to get a vital piece of information.
The difficulty of puzzle varies throughout the game. As you would expect the first few puzzles are easy but instead of becoming increasingly difficult the puzzles just vary in difficulty throughout. In many cases the player will be able to solve a puzzle in a matter of seconds - even towards the end of the game.
For some of the trickier puzzles there is a very nice hint system. You can pick up chewing gum throughout the game (chewing gum helps Tethers think) and as long as you have a piece you can access hints. Initial hints are basic but if you ask for hints enough you will be given the answer. Gum is plentiful so you will never feel completely stuck no matter how hard the puzzle. However, you will get penalized for using hints and for submitting wrong answers.
The puzzle submission process was one of the most entertaining parts of the game. Every time you submit an answer you are giving a rating based on the amount of taxpayer’s dollars you spent solving the puzzle. If you used hints or made a wrong guess the amount will go up. While the total amount spent on solving puzzles doesn’t change the outcome of the game I always felt guilty spending more money than necessary (although I would be kind of fun to see how much government money you could waste over the course of the game).
The adventure gameplay elements are minimal. Apart from solving puzzles you don’t have much else to do. The game holds your hand and instructs you exactly where to go and when. While this does prevent the player from following the wrong lead it also doesn’t give you much freedom to explore Scroggins or feel like you are solving the mystery on your own.
Puzzle Agent is a short game (only 2-3 hours) and maybe because of this the story does peter out towards the end. I’m still not quite sure what happened at the end - although it did involve more creepy gnomes - I can’t overstate the scariness of the gnomes. I’m not sure the cryptic ending is an entirely bad thing but I did feel a little cheated that there was so much build up for so little pay off. However, it needs to be noted that Puzzle Agent is not a full-fledged stand alone game. It’s a pilot that hopefully will have life as a full Telltale season at some point.
In all the premise was great and the Nelson Tethers is a character I would enjoy playing again. The voice acting was superb, especially Tethers. However, as a pure puzzler the game needs to be a little more difficult in order to really give the player satisfaction. With such a good hint system in place Puzzle Agent could be much harder without being frustrating. But the thing that will make me go back to Puzzle Agent is the quirkiness of the story - I really want to see what Telltale will come up with next. Just warn me if there are going to be gnomes.
Skip, Rent, Buy? Try the demo. If the puzzle and story interest you enough buy. But really this is just a taste of what may or may not be a new series.
