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1-9 of 9 Finders Commission, February 2, 2024In The Finders Commission, you play as one of the members of the eponymous group, a euphemistically named band of thieves-for-hire. You’ve been hired by the goddess Bastet (or maybe just a regular talking cat) to steal an artifact belonging to her out of a museum. You navigate the museum exhibits, in the process avoiding police officers, creating distractions, entering various codes, flirting with a guard for information, and so on, all in preparation for the moment when you finally take Bastet’s aegis from its case. There seems to be no way to fail at this, but you receive a score at the end grading how well you pulled it off.
As this description might suggest, in a case of convergent evolution, the gameplay here is rather similar to the heist sections of Lady Thalia, which makes it a bit awkward to comment on due to the bias involved. That is to say, I think it’s a very solid foundation for a heist game, but of course I would think so. In any case, barring a few bugs and one puzzle that was somewhat opaque due to the underdescribed environment, I think the structure was largely implemented well here. Nothing is really that difficult to figure out, but there’s some challenge involved in fully exploring the museum and finding all the things that you can do.
That said, the writing was a little spare for my tastes. The prose consists of terse sentences with minimal variation in structure; many rooms lack sensory detail, and not much characterization comes through either. It’s very much a straightforward recitation of a list of facts. If the gameplay were more complex, that might have been enough to carry the game, but as it is I think it could stand to be punched up a little.
Also—I don’t want to be told that the detective “could be a friend or maybe even a lover” if the two of you were on the same side of the law. I want to see that tension between them; I want to feel the star-crossed chemistry for myself. (I mean, again, of course I would, but.) Even though they don’t interact, this could still be demonstrated through how the PC thinks about the detective and what they notice about him. Obviously this is a trope I enjoy, but I’d like to think this isn’t just about me wanting to see more of it in general; if you’re not going to make the player feel the gulf between the two characters and genuinely regret that it’s impassable, why even bring it up?
You can choose to play any one of a number of different Finders, who apparently have different strengths and interests, but as far as I can tell, the only difference this made in the game was to the three-sentence description of what you do with your morning before heading to the museum. This seems like a bit of a wasted opportunity for greater variation in both narration and gameplay actions available.
I could see an expanded version of this game, or a sequel, becoming something I would very much enjoy, but as it is there’s not quite enough there for me to become fully invested.
Heist For Cats, December 20, 2023Adapted from an IFCOMP23 Review
What a lovely palate cleanser this is. A short, unadorned Twine game about thieving, that is to say, finding. Fine, heisting. I had to laugh out loud when my chosen thief Quinn noted biscuits and gravy were their favorite. Mine too, I see you Quinn! Now, my position on felines is publicly documented so I won’t weigh in on the client. Suffice to say, for me and Quinn a job is a job. After being given your target, off you go to improvise some crime! A quick glimpse of the city (I was partial to the pocket museum) then down to tacks.
You explore a 5x5 grid of Egyptian displays, avoid cameras and cops, engineer the crime and get out. In general the text is terse and tight. Not a lot of flair or adjectives, just some concise tangible details to set locations in mind. A few nice environmental changes on revisits so things don’t get too static. A little bit of character work with a tour guide. All of it with a light, deft hand. Don’t want to spoil any of it, but exploration is rewarded and you eventually cobble up a multi-phase plan and execute. I appreciated the gentle nudging the game provided. Notwithstanding the clearly signposted puzzle elements, the player still feels some agency and initiative thanks to the neutral text. Things progress with light tension. If your plan fails to disarm the alarm, you have a timer on your escape (which ups the tension!). The puzzles are logical and satisfying if not brain burny, then you get to see the achievements screen and done. I might have wished for a little last minute sass from O’Brien, or Agatha(!) but success is its own reward I suppose.
Only one possible bug found - after a few tries at using (Spoiler - click to show)a thieving box it disappeared from my inventory, and a cursory cycle through the museum did not turn it up. Also not enough text detail (Spoiler - click to show)to make camera positioning clear, though in retrospect I have a pretty good idea what to do. Probably lost some endgame points for those, but had enough other tools to complete the job.
It was start to finish a breezy, pleasant outing. Just a bit too slight to be Engaging, enough personality to Spark, a great way to shake the weight of some longer games.
Played: 10/2/23
Playtime: 35min, 82/100 after some timer backups
Artistic/Technical ratings: Sparks of Joy, Mostly Seamless
Would Play After Comp?: No, experience seems complete
Artistic scale: Bouncy, Mechanical, Sparks of Joy, Engaging, Transcendent
Technical scale: Unplayable, Intrusive, Notable (Bugginess), Mostly Seamless, Seamless
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1 people found the following review helpful:
A feisty heist, December 8, 2023(This is a lightly-edited version of a review I posted to the IntFiction forums during 2023's IFComp).
There are a lot of things I enjoyed about Finders Commission, a parser-like choice game where you carry out a museum heist — like, for example, everything in that clause I just wrote – but my favorite was the breezy way it lays out its premise:
"Bastet is a beautiful cat.
She believes she is an ancient deity who should be worshipped by all.
Her Aegis, or breastplate armor, has been missing for centuries.
She read online that it was sold at auction to the Museum of Egyptian Antiquities."
Each line of is wackier than then next, but it’s delivered with such supreme nonchalance that you almost don’t notice how off the wall it is – to say nothing of the way the brilliantly impossible-to-argue-with first line just slips by. The game largely delivers on this promise, offering an entertaining set of puzzles and a straightforwardly pleasant story; it’s a bit rough in places, and I think it had room to lean more into the silliness of its setup, but I found it an engaging way to while away half an hour.
The planning is an integral part of any heist, and here Finder’s Commission offers just enough to whet the appetite. You get to choose your protagonist from a menu of gender-ambiguous options, each of whom boasts a special talent or two (I opted for Nat, “strong and compassionate”), and then negotiate your fee with Bastet (to no real end, as far as I could tell, but it’s still a fun touch) before heading to the museum to reclaim the unjustly-stolen antiquity. This phase did seem to have a peculiarly large number of empty, useless locations, and that feeling persisted once I got to the main gameplay space; fortunately, it doesn’t take long to find a map to make the compass navigation more intuitive, but there’s still way more real estate in the museum than seems necessary to support the handful of puzzles on offer. I’m guessing that this is partially in service to the character-selection portion of the game – there was at least one interaction I found that I’m pretty sure was available because of Nat’s strength, so I wouldn’t be surprised if some of the useless places I encountered play host to bespoke options for other protagonists – but there might have been a more elegant way to accomplish this.
The writing also feels a bit perfunctory once the heist proper kicks off. There are a few vignettes that have some charm – I liked the sequence where you can do some light flirting with a cute docent – but for the most part the descriptions are quite functional. This isn’t the kind of game that should provide reams of historical context for each inessential artifact displayed in the museum, nor should there be long dialogue trees with NPCs when you’re trying to keep a low profile, but I couldn’t help think of the way the Lady Thalia games get a lot of mileage out of a few well-chosen period details and a couple lines of witty banter.
The actual process of making off with the aegis doesn’t have too many steps, but some do require some timing and forethought, which pushed me to scout out the scene, and try to come up with a plan before making my move, all of which felt in-genre. Each puzzle is relatively simple on its own, but the game does have time limits in a few sequences, and the inventory system requires manually selecting an item when you want to use it in a location, which discourages lawnmowering, so accomplishing the goal felt satisfying even though it was ultimately fairly straightforward.
I wound up with 87 points out of 100, though I characteristically want to try to argue my way to a better score – for example, I got dinged for leaving a security camera pointing at the aegis, but while I had figured out how to move it, the game didn’t do a good job of explaining which direction it needed to be pointed so it couldn’t see the case I was breaking into. I also got dinged for not charging my phone, when the last time I checked it it had 162% battery power, and for not tipping a barista when I’d never actually ordered a coffee. So I think we can all agree I deserved to get 100%.
Beyond these small oddities, I think I ran into a couple of other bugs – in particular, an important box-shaped gizmo seemed to go missing most of the way through the game, though I was able to undo back until it popped up again. These weren’t a very big deal, but hopefully they can be cleaned up for a post-Comp release.
Still, even when I was thinking of ways the game could be improved, I was still smiling as I played Finder’s Commission. I believe it’s the author’s first piece of IF, and it appears they’ve taken the oft-given advice that new authors start out with a short, manageable first game; if that’s the case, perhaps there’ll be a future, more robust Finders Commission game to come (this one is labelled as Episode One), which I’d certainly look forward to!
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3 people found the following review helpful:
Choice-based museum heist game with complex map and goddesses , November 22, 2023This is a heist game, written in Twine.
It has a character selection screen, and then you’re given a problem to solve. In this case, an ancient Cat goddess desires her treasure back!
The game that ensues is almost entirely focused on mechanics, with the story broadly sketched out. You end up in a very large museum that you have to navigate, finding the clues and items necessary to grab the treasure.
I found myself wishing for an on-screen map early on, getting lost pretty easily. Eventually a found a map, right before I won, but it could have been nice to have it onscreen.
There are 16 or so locations in the museum, and each one has only a line or two of description, with perhaps one interesting item to interact with. This strips down the game to its core features, which are primarily movement and object gathering.
I’ve seen a lot of reviews of parser games saying ‘I wonder if this should have been choice based’. Here, I think, not ‘this should be parser based’ but ‘I wonder if the author would enjoy writing parser games’. There seems to be a true pleasure in gathering inventory and travelling that I think could make parser code appealing.
In any case, I solved it, but only with some hints and a little peeking at the code (I was dumb and couldn’t find the key combination on my own).
Overall, I would have liked a little more fleshed out detail in the museum, since it sounded cool, and would have liked an on screen map, but I did have fun. I scored 82/100!
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3 people found the following review helpful:
Running around like a mad man, November 22, 2023The Finders Commission is a relatively short game, set as some sort of escape-room-puzzle piece where you are tasked to retrieve an artifact from an exposition, in broad daylight. There are 5 characters to choose from (though I am not sure whether they influenced the gameplay) and a handful of different puzzles to interact with. There are two endings: you retrieve the item or are caught trying. I reached the score of 92/100 after a restart.
TFC takes the campy traits of heist story, with the strange buyer requiring your help*, the security officer that has a tooth against you, the maybe-naive damsel/himbo that slip out important information, and the sneaky exit... The puzzles are diverse and interconnected, some requiring manipulation of an object, others to find a specific object to interact with another, and some to distract NPCs to enter new rooms. And there's a maze-like feel to the main location.
*I don't know whether it was a jab at like the British Museum losing artefacts recently or not wanting to give some back, but the thought of it being the case was funny :P
I played the game twice essentially, one where I felt completely lost, interacting with anything I could, solving puzzles a bit at random, and hoping for the best... and finding myself stuck, unable to find a way into a certain room to get the item to unlock the case with the artefact. Turns out, you have to interact not just with objects around you, but with NPCs (which I thought was a bit weird, you don't really want attention on you). So the second time around was easier... Though I still found myself running around the place, even after getting the map*.
*would have been nice to find a map at the start, with more indication of displayed elements on it. It's a gallery after all... and it's a bit hidden within the satchel, I would have put it in the sidebar imo. Or the rooms each have a name, like with parsers.
It was a bit bizarre to not be able to examine the case until you open it (a nice description of the item could add to the vibe, maybe staying too long would have the security guard be extra suspicious of you), or even examine anything that wasn't puzzle-related object (as a way to "blend" with the other visitors). Also a bit of a shame not to be able to interact with your rival or find a way to have them getting caught (they were really sus), or with the guard (I'm a sucker for taunting your "enemies" even if it would lead to a bad ending), or even further with the tour guide (I was promised romance ;-;*). I was a bit confused too with the need to include other locations, since you don't really have anything you can do there (unless it's the locations for future episode?).
*since the subtitle was Episode 1, maybe they'll be back in the next episode?
TFC is the kind of puzzle game that when you get it, it's smooth as butter... but if you struggle finding things or examine something at the wrong time or don't follow the steps as intended, it can become quite frustrating. With a bit more tweaks here and there, it could make for a well-rounded game.
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2 people found the following review helpful:
Fun Twine puzzler, November 20, 2023I have to admit that I was a little underwhelmed by this game at first; the worldbuilding felt a bit bizarre and random for what’s essentially a museum heist story. But once I got into the puzzley portion I was hooked. It’s easy to locate the item you need to liberate from this museum, but less easy to acquire and escape with it.
The gameplay reminded me of the Lady Thalia games—explore, find useful items/info, heist, escape. The game does a good job at creating tension, with an officer following you around to keep an eye on you, appearing and disappearing as you traverse the rooms, and at creating a sense of time passing, with the security office going from occupied at first visit to unoccupied at later ones. The achievements at the end make it clear that there are multiple methods for escaping detection, and that it’s possible to succeed at the job but incriminate yourself in the process. All of this added a great amount of complexity and made for a fun game! (Another note: you’ll find an in-game map, which is nice—I had thought about drawing a map at first, but then I was glad I didn’t bother.)
I do have some nitpicks; I found the (brief) dialogue section rather clunky, and didn’t buy the supposed romantic chemistry between the PC and their conversation partner. And then there were some elements that felt set up to have an impact on gameplay, but didn't seem to in the end, such as choosing your character at the start, and the list of locations to go other than the museum. But I certainly had fun solving the puzzles and will gladly play any future games in this series!
- Edo, November 6, 2023
- Zape, October 11, 2023
Solid, small heist game, October 6, 2023
Heist games are well-known genre, and with good reason. There's a clear goal that requires ingenuity to achieve; there's a spatial and temporal element that fits IF world building well; and of course here are opportunities for puzzles and suspense. As others have noted, The Finders Commission starts of with some pretty bizarre world building (and a weird choice between what seem to be five indistinguishable characters). But then it quickly turns into a fairly standard heist game. There's the museum; there are some people to either manipulate or watch out for; a few opportunities for puzzle solving; and if it all goes well, you walk out with the loot!
Apart from one possible bug (the box that I believe I needed to turn off the alarm suddenly disappeared from my inventory), everything was solidly implemented. It's bit strange that you cannot investigate the display before launching the chariot -- the first few times I tried, I got interrupted, but later on the room was empty and I still wasn't allowed to read the label. This threw me for a while. But I ended up solving the puzzles without too much trouble, felt some nice tension as I had to defeat a timed sequence, and was satisfied. There's nothing truly memorable or innovative about the game, but it succeeds at being what it wants to be.
The biggest mystery of all was the breakfast my character claimed to be their favourite: buttermilk biscuits with sausage gravy. This sounded like the worst and most implausible thing in existence, so I did some googling, and found recipes in which I saw: biscuits that did not look like biscuits; sausages that did not look like sausages (but more like the minced meat you might put into a sausage); and most of all, gravy that really, really did not look like gravy. From what I gathered, it was more something like minced meat in a creamy sauce. All of which left me only more flabbergasted. Cookies served with meat and cream? As a breakfast? Now this is a mystery someone should make a game about!
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