Puzzle Agent (PC)

Back before Telltale Games slipped into their comfortable niche of choice-focused adventure games, they approached the adventure genre with a few different styles of game, one among them being the appropriately puzzle-focused title Puzzle Agent. Combining the story-focused approached of an adventure game with an array of puzzles that you might find in an activity book or a game like Professor Layton, Puzzle Agent makes for a pretty good mixture even if the two parts of its composition sometimes feel rather disconnected.

 

For a company that usually relies on licenses even from the start, its refreshing to see Telltale have faith in a wholly original story for Puzzle Agent (even if the art style comes from Graham Annable’s works). Puzzle Agent involves a linear sequence of story moments chained together by the completion of puzzles you find along the way, and right off the bat the game does not try to deny this unusual structure. The player is put in charge of Nelson Tethers, the main agent of the peculiar Puzzle Research Division of the FBI. Such a branch of the bureau is rarely called upon, and even when the game plot kicks off, Nelson Tethers is only tasked with discovering why the President’s favorite eraser manufacturer has closed down their factory. This does sound like quite a kooky set-up for a very lighthearted game, but as soon as you head out to Scoggins, Minnesota, things seem to set a different tone. While not completely abandoning the offbeat humor, there is an unusual air of unsettling mystery to the town, and the denizens and their fixation on puzzles is directly addressed as something that is outside the norm in this game’s world. Although your goal starts off simple enough, the frigid reception from the townsfolk and their peculiar behavior gives way to a greater mystery, Puzzle Agent managing to hook in the player with a sequence of strange and ever-evolving events that would have made for a fine story even without the gameplay elements.

Or… at least it almost did. While the Fargo-like small town with a hidden layer behind its strange locals makes for a compelling mystery, by the time the game ends, it doesn’t quite resolve itself. You do eventually discover why the people of Scoggins are standoffish and obsessed with puzzles, but even knowing the reasoning behind it, you still don’t know why that reason actually exists. It’s like knowing that a car runs because of its engine without knowing what an engine does, and it’s not the only piece of the story that the game does not bother to explain. More than a few moments happen and never get addressed or explained, and while clearing up every mystery isn’t a requirement, the incomplete ending makes other elements from earlier parts of the game stand out as well. It does seem that the story gets a closer examination and is expanded upon in the sequel Puzzle Agent 2, but this isn’t an episodic game, meaning that this product was on the market for a while without a proper conclusion guaranteed and the conclusion to this tale is sold separately. While it is comforting to know that there will be a resolution to the events of this game, it does feel like a bit of a let down that the engaging build-up and key moments of this game culminate into the game sputtering out, wrapping things up to avoid the need to give interesting answers to the unusual questions it raised.

 

Besides talking to the townsfolk, Nelson Tethers’s actions during the game often involve him finding and solving puzzles to either open people up to him or find the right path to the next part of the mystery. Not all of them serve a practical purpose and the game will sometimes slow down a building pace just to give you a slow mental test, but even when they feel disconnected from each other, the puzzles and plot are connected enough that neither totally undermines the other. There’s a pretty decent selection of puzzles in the game, ranging from more colorful takes on jigsaw style puzzles, logic puzzles, riddles, math challenges, and more. After completing puzzles and submitting them to the bureau for review, the game will give you a rating on how well you did provided you found the correct answer. The ratings are mostly for personal satisfaction and don’t seem to play into anything beyond making you proud of your puzzle-solving acumen, and the criteria for a good grade isn’t that difficult to meet. So long as you get the right answer when you submit the puzzle for the first time and didn’t use any hints, you’re guaranteed top marks, but even a hint or two won’t lead to an overly punishing rating. The hint system is tied to pieces of gum you can find around the environment as you investigate the mystery, with each piece of gum spent on a puzzle revealing a helpful tip on how to solve it. Most puzzles aren’t too difficult if you spend time to think on them, but sometimes the phrasing used to describe the parameters of the puzzle isn’t the best, with a key detail a bit too ambiguous or other aspects of the puzzle misleading without the details a hint might give. One particular puzzle had three numbered objects that seemed like they needed to be placed in order to make a bridge, but the numbers were meaningless so long as each object was in the one of the available spots, complicating the puzzle with an unnecessary detail that will only lead people astray.

The difficulty of the puzzles will certainly come down to a subjective interpretation of difficulty, but they do at least start off fairly simple and consistently sprinkle in some simpler ones between the brain busters. Although the game sometimes tells you to do a puzzle quickly, there never seems to be an actual timer, meaning you only have to submit your solution when you feel comfortable with it. Some puzzles might require problem solving that gets complex enough you might want a pen and paper to help, but nothing ever felt like it necessitated me whipping out a notepad to work it out. In fact, some puzzles are almost too simple, with most of the placement puzzles having objects snap into the right place so long as you hover the puzzle piece over the right area.

 

You will gradually see a few puzzles repeat themselves as you progress, the rules being the same but the game making things more complex or adding a new element, but some of these are optional just in case you get tired of putting bugs in boxes or tying bags of gnomes to bird feet. It’s probably gone a bit too long without mentioning that most of the puzzles fit the game’s cartoon art style, and while some have to prioritize function over appearance, you can expect a few creative and cute images to make the puzzles seem less like work, which they technically are considering Nelson Tethers’s profession. The whole game is presented with a rather interesting cartoon style, creating a world that can look both kooky and creepy whenever the game feels like it. However, most characters and objects have a crayon-like outline to them that makes close-ups look ugly and blur other scenes. For the most part, it gives the game a unique look that pairs well with its mix of the comical and the uncanny. The voice cast also does a fairly good job as well at selling the strange nature of the civilians, with Nelson Tethers himself able to justify some monologuing and reflection by way of recording his thoughts for the eventual FBI report.

THE VERDICT: Puzzle Agent seems like a promising game at first, with a fairly good blend of an intriguing plot and gradually escalating puzzles. It engages the mind with both story and challenges, but once everything comes to a head and the credits roll, you’re left with a story that didn’t bother to wrap itself up properly, something the game even seems to know based on how the final scene plays out. Splitting the tale across two games without putting a satisfying cap on the first game’s plot keeps Puzzle Agent from realizing its potential, but besides quitting early, most of its components work well enough to ensure it’s not a bad game.

 

And so, I give Puzzle Agent for PC…

A GOOD rating. A tale of a strange town with peculiar people, gameplay peppered with brain teasers… Puzzle Agent combines intrigue and puzzles into a package that, while not always complementary, at least keeps the mind engaged on two different levels. The story keeps a good pace with many moments that only feed into the grander mystery, but that mystery falls short when the game wraps up before it bothers to fully expose the truth of it all. Playing Puzzle Agent comes with the condition that you won’t be completely satisfied, but the commitment to style, a variety of puzzles that average out to being pretty good, and the quirky nature of the plot still ensure it is an enjoyable ride.

 

Puzzle Agent is a good game despite dropping the ball with a few easy or repeating puzzles and some narrative loose ends. Perhaps after playing the supplement that is Puzzle Agent 2 the narrative puzzle of just what is going on in Scoggins, Minnesota may be resolved, but it comes at the cost of sacrificing a solid narrative for the first game.