You'll recall that Floor 13 was my second review on this site. Like many retro games, it's not a masterpiece; but it without a doubt deserves a place in gaming history for what it achieved. And what it achieved was being a fascinatingly disturbing strategy game.
If you have better things to do than read my previous post: Floor 13 was a game where you played the Director General of the (as far as we know) fictional British secret police. Each day you'll be given a series of reports concerning a particular case, and it would be up to you to choose how to solve this problem - be it tapping into phones, tailing someone, raiding an establishment, defaming someone with black propaganda, interrogating, or even assassinating if the need arises. You can win the game by staying on top of the polls, or by doing secret missions for an Illuminati-like cult. You loose by either failing on the polls or being too obvious.
The latter is what'll cause the most frustration to players, and it's one reason why I don't consider Floor 13 a masterpiece. The other is how the interface hasn't aged well, and there's hardly any sound so 98% of the game is spent playing in absolute silence. There's not even the sound of flicking paper as you sift through documents, the door opening as you enter your office, or the phone ringing when your secretary calls. I guess sound just couldn't fit onto the floppy disc...
But despite my mixture of praise and criticism, one of the original developers of Floor 13 shared my review online - which immediately made my view-count skyrocket whilst leaving me surprisingly starstruck. It was only my second post and already I was attracting readers and recieving feedback. It's funny looking back on my old posts when almost a year later I feel I've improved so much as a writer and reviewer - even though my spellchecker keeps missing things.
Thus, in return, I feel I owe it to the developer to play the most recent alpha of the remake to Floor 13 (which you can check out here) and give my thoughts since he's currently open to suggestions. (I assure you, this is totally not because I'm still waiting for my PS4 with a copy of Battlefront bundled to arrive.) Throughout playing, I kept in mind that this game's being produced by an army of one. Having kept track of the remake's development via Tumblr, I know that whilst this game doesn't exactly exhibit top of the range graphics, there is a lot of work behind this. Each decision you make is paragraphs upon paragraphs of coding, all being hammered out by one guy. My mind unravels trying to imagine how much work this humble alpha took, so I'm not going to flood this review with suggestions on graphics, or requests for sound effects or anything that would require a completely different engine (well, maybe one or two things).
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| The remake currently re-uses the original graphics - which have actually aged quite well. |
I really like how the remake clearly intends to keep to the spirit of the original whilst updating it for more modern times. Reports refer to online communication, and plot lines relate to modern events. One of the first I got was a warning about a Muslim teacher potentially radicalising students - a story directly taken from headlines last year. This is what made the original so great: the deliciously dark material told through mere paperwork and trashy tabloid headlines. Sadly though, surveillance is still limited to spying on property and tapping into phone calls rather than monitoring online activity.
Perhaps the best story I encountered was a pharmacy that was exhibiting mysterious, cult-like activity and was possibly distributing hazardous chemicals. I ordered my thought-police officers to monitor all suspects and conduct a discreet search of the pharmacy. Their search yielded a secret backdoor entrance to an underground complex straight out of a Bond film. More! More of this please!
My favourite addition is the inclusion of a 'visibility' variable. Each report, as well as telling you what effect this has on your party, also says how suspicious this incident makes you. You can also review your total suspicion rating as well as your poll rating. Better still; the game doesn't say how suspicious each order will make you, so you still need to make judgement calls based on how urgent the situation is verses how visible solving it fast will make your department. This completely removes the originals biggest problem: not being able to tell how suspicious you're acting. Thank you digital god.
However, the game as it stands at the moment is very difficult to play; mostly because there are several bugs and loopholes that need to be ironed out.
There's a game breaking glitch I kept encountering whereby often if you assign certain departments to a suspect then they'll remain assigned to that suspect even if the case is closed. And you only know a case is fully closed when the order comes to erase all records of the case - meaning you can't cancel any orders. The original automatically cancelled any operations if the threat was solved, but here it seems you have to do it yourself otherwise you'll never be able to strike the headquarters of the IRA and you'll cause considerable damage.
'Infiltration' just doesn't work. I sign the order, and then nothing happens. Thus, any time I'm given a case that requires an organisation to be stopped then I just have to sit there and watch. I also was never able to abduct anyone either, since the game never gave me the option to do so. This must be how the poor Conservative government feels; unable to invade our privacy and abuse our human rights.
There's still no way to visit each department either, meaning that if you're acting too suspicious then you have to go to each suspect individually and cancel each order one by one instead of just going to the removals department and halting all operations. (I've played Resident Evil. I'm not letting anyone affiliated with The Umbrella Corporation live.) There was also one time when a suspect, without any announcement from the game and with no input from me, died mid-way through the case - thus closing the story despite me doing nothing. I bet MI5 wishes this happened all the time.
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| 'Londonistan' was actually a word used by tabloids. |
Overall, there is still clearly a long way to go for this remake, but it's definitely on the right track. Behind it's problems (which, except for the mouse-support one, can easily be adressed) there is a culturally relevant and possibly revolutionary indie game here. With each passing day, the need for a Floor 13 remake becomes more apparent. As terrorism strikes the western world, and the government continues to deal with it in the worst possible ways. As the UK tries to strip citizens of their human rights so they can be spied on and deported at will. As we more and more enter an Orwellian state where the government keeps everything under tight wraps so no-one really knows what to think. As the press becomes increasingly more controlled and as private companies corrupt democracy. We need a Floor 13 remake more than ever.
But, no pressure...
