Shadow Operative

This was fun. A smooth Vorple/Glulx game with a techno soundtrack, Shadow Operative begins with you on the run from goons after having botched your last cyberspace mission. After a race across the city skyline on a hoverbike, you’ll eventually find yourself hired to infiltrate the Nakamura corporation and uncover why their recent pharmaceutical trials are going wrong.

The first thing you notice about Shadow Operative is its interface, which is split into three windows. The middle is where the action occurs, the left gives you a command list that you can click on, and the right features the game’s cover art while keeping track of your inventory. The blue-text-on-black-background color scheme fits the game’s tone well, too. Overall I think the interface enhanced my experience of Shadow Operative, although I found that I rarely used the left panel. The soundtrack, with its fast-past techno music, also helped put me in the mood to ride across the city or sneak through the Nakamura building.

Gameplay glides along easily; it’s always clear which problems you need to be working on next. The best gameplay feature, though, is that at times you need to enter cyberspace to advance. This places you in a simulation where you have to solve puzzles that correspond to uncovering some electronic secret. It’s like playing a couple of mini-IF games inside the larger Shadow Operative game itself. These simulations are far-removed from the cyberpunk setting, adding some nice tonal variety. There’s also an interesting twist in the late game that I did not see, despite the sprinkled hints in that direction.

Several one-off geek culture references, including to Soylent Green, Monty Python and the Holy Grail, and The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, are a nice touch. And you can’t ever go wrong with me when using the Goldbach and Collatz conjectures to help solve a puzzle. 🙂

My only critique of Shadow Operative is that most of its puzzles are rather easy. It’s generally quite clear what you need to do to advance, and I even solved one puzzle (finding the company password) by just doing what I could in that location until I realized I was about to obtain the information I needed. Perhaps the PC is a fantastic operative, but it does seem that stealing corporate secrets would entail more of a challenge.

Overall, Shadow Operative provides a fun, fast-paced cyberpunk-corporate spy experience via a pleasing interface and a well-chosen soundtrack. I think it’s a good game; the only thing it needs to reach the “very good” or “great” level is more challenging puzzles. Players who prefer story-focused IF, though, probably won’t mind that: They can just hang on and enjoy the Shadow Operative ride.