After that thrilling outer space adventure, Quantum follows it up with an undersea voyage. Plans of a terrorist attack have been uncovered, suggesting that a British aircraft carrier where experiments with a new weapon are being carried out. The terrorists plan to sink the ship and salvage the weapon, giving them a dangerous new form of attack. International relationships must be strained, as the British are neither informed of the danger they're in nor the American plan to explode a submarine in close proximity to the ship.
For the player, the next mission also begins with a vehicle segment. This time, it's piloting a submarine to find and destroy an enemy sub before they can torpedo a British aircraft carrier.
Once found, the game tosses out the fancy engine to present you with a chase to plan a mine on the enemy sub before it can complete its mission. It's frantic, so I can't pretend there's not some entertainment to be had, though it feels a bit primitive after scanning the ocean floor to find the sub in the first place.
This mission introduces a spy kit new mechanic that will show up from time to time. The spy kit is loaded with all kinds of tools that may be useful on your missions ranging from fake moustaches to shotguns, to invisible ink, to sheets of paper, to the anti-submarine explosives used to save the carrier.
The trick is that you can only take one item from it with you. It's a called shot as to what you feel like you're going to need to get through a mission. This system is similar to one used in Burglar!, where players can take a few items with them to each job. In that game, sometimes you might luck out and the consequence of not bringing an item would only mean foregoing valuables and a lower score. In ASCII Spy, if you don't have the item it expects, you will be unable to proceed.
Said kit becomes relevant immediately, as the limpet mine is the only way to deal with the submarine. Makes sense, it's either that a creative interpretation of what is meant by "sub machine gun".
Having abandoned your sub to plant the mine, you're forced to climb aboard the British vessel. Tensions between the US and England must be high as you're not exactly welcomed aboard. Using you spy kit you need to disguise yourself as a British person. This means putting on a fake moustache, the only one of the game's puzzles that I immediately clocked the solution to.
There's more to figure here than the need for a moustache. A new puzzle emerges from trying to figure out what all the little objects do here. One white key is blocked by the guard. The other is behind a door that can't be opened directly.
Getting the green guard out of the way sends them running downward until they hit the steel "I" beam. The keys let you reach two possible rooms. One on the left where the object inside does nothing. One on the right where the object inside runs into the room with the left one, or at least tries to, blocking the door if it's still there.
Nothing is particularly intuitive to how it will behave, so it's easy to find yourself in a number of unwinnable situations. The key to getting through is to realize that touching the beam a second time will allow you to start pushing it around. (Don't question it.) Attempting to push it into the one-way door, and the object will repeatedly try to move east until it can do so successfully. Combine this with a switch in the room with the spy kit that temporarily opens the door, and you can jam it open.
It feels like an exploit, but I can't come up with any other solution. It just doesn't seem possible to run to the door in time as the player, and my playthrough had me giving up and exploiting the ability to move and pause on the same cycle to out-speed any objects.
Though the puzzle here is messy, it is rather fun to slowly put the pieces together, as long as you don't mind having to reload a few saves to figure out the order of operations to prevent objects blocking doorways. At the same time however, Quantum doesn't communicate to players that this is a puzzle with a fail state. If you don't have a good save, you can ruin your progress by mistakenly thinking that getting the key up top is "step one", and a safe spot to save your game. A little word of caution would go a long way to saving people some frustration.
Make it below deck, and you'll be rewarded with a look at the trippy and deadly new weapon. This is the "Death Slime" that's recently been discovered, and whose formula the terrorists want for themselves. The effect is really cool, slime spreads out for a bit and then the breakables are turned into stars. Due to the stat limit, not every wall can turn into a star, with the rest being erased. As the slime spreads, you can get some pretty patterns going.
Of course, focus on the visuals, and you'll just die to the stars. A scientist running the experiment demands to know who you are and what you're doing, with some dialog options that get you killed, and a different path to convince them to hide from the out of control slime before having a conversation.
The presentation here is great. Once you're hiding in the corner, the scientist explains through single line messages that the slime is a new weapon, and how the experiment will end once the blue shields are brought down. All the while the stars slowly march towards the player and chip away at the blue protective barrier. It gives you something neat to watch while reading, instead of being something better off displayed in a single window.
As one final conflict before returning to the white house the terrorists make a last ditch attack from the air.
Shooter engines are about as gentle an introduction to engine-based gameplay I can think of, needing little more than a triangle of arrows to move and shoot, and some enemies that blindly do the same in your direction. Quantum, despite having done several attempts at far more innovative engines thus far, goes for the lackluster approach of putting a row of water above the player and telling them to start shooting at the sky.
The intended danger here is that these planes obey Space Invaders rules, descending every time they hit a wall. If one reaches the bottom corner a game over is triggered. The threat you actually get isn't very daunting. The top row of planes will quickly decimate their own forces, with only a few shots of your own actually needing to hit anything.
Defeating them opens the door with no acknowledgment of your single-handedly shooting down an entire squadron with a hand-held weapon. The president gives his thanks for saving the carrier at least.
Yet despite everything about the mission being a complete success, the terrorists somehow got the Death Slime formula, and also kidnapped the scientist you met.
It's a little annoying having your efforts brushed aside for the sake of a new mission. And it's one that should have been easy to work around? Tell me the scientist was on the team that made the slime, and that a different scientist got taken. Or even have the previous mission go awry! So far everything's gone rather well for our hero. Perhaps escalate the stakes a bit by having the player get overwhelmed by superior numbers like a battalion of fighter jets and unable to secure the scientist.
It's another real departure from previous missions. There are only three boards of gameplay to it, with the objective being to find a key to rescue the kidnapped scientist, and an additional challenge of figuring out which cell actually has him locked up.
This takes the strange form of a bathroom puzzler. Quantum continues to have ideas on what players need to do and players need to read his mind, a task I was not up for. The main challenge is finding a way to get past a security door at the back of the bathroom which has an alarm that will go off if it's tampered with. Therefore, the first thing you need to do is pick up a toilet brush off the counter, and put it in a toilet.
Why? Because once you do that, touching the empty counter space where it was (and only that one, the numerous other already empty counter tiles do nothing) will allow you to put your spy kit down!
Then, short out a micro-controller in the door by throwing a bucket of water on it, and use a bomb from the kit to blow it open. Don't worry, nobody will hear you.
Finding the correct cell is actually a lot more straightforward. In my playthrough, I soured the mood having to consult the file viewer to learn about being able to put down your spy kit, and peeked at the cells as well.
A document reveals the location in code, and I had found nothing to hint at the answer. Then I realized there was a door I had gained access to that didn't need a key which contained a code wheel engine to reveal the answer. "Oh", I believe, was my reaction.
I'll be forever thankful there's no escort mission. Once you've freed the scientist, they vanish and you're free to head to do the usual thing and blow up the facility. ...After solving some little puzzles of course.
ASCII Spy continues to have its puzzles be inscrutable or obvious. On the obvious side of things the rope found in the first room is indeed used to tie up a guard that you knock unconscious so they can't get help when they wake up. Less obvious is the robotic arm that lets you pick up and drop things where you get no description of what they are beyond seeing the object's character. Don't drop the beaker of acid that you don't know is a beaker of acid until you drop it! If you do, it will kill you.
Oh. You also get to activate a moving wall to crush a man to death to get a permission slip to be allowed to play with the robot arm.
Don't feel too bad for the guy, as your last task is to run a nuclear reactor hard enough to trigger a meltdown. ...hey what country is this base in anyway? There are some people who are gonna have a bad time when a nuclear incident occurs in their backyard.
What's a little mushroom cloud if it helps stop communism?
The penultimate mission is a more involved variation on finding the mob boss from earlier. Someone named Mr. Green has been getting independently involved with the terrorists, but it's unclear if he's aiding them or on the CIA's side. You're tasked with spying on him for a bit to uncover his intentions, and perhaps work with him if he can be trusted.
This brings players to the game's final city mission. This time there isn't any base to uncover, just the whereabouts of a man in disguise. In order to discover which NPC he is, you need to interrogate a number of citizens for details on the man. This kind of investigation-based gameplay is, well, based. It plays really nicely with players' nature tendency to touch everything they see and talk to everyone they meet, so collecting information and using that to identify the person you're after is compelling.
All those formerly dud buildings meant to throw you off the trail are now vital. A hotel clerk guides you to the man's room at a hotel, where the janitor says that the man staying in it called himself Mr. Vine.
Having an alternate name to look for then allows you to get some results at the bank when you ask for a customer's private information. This may be the one weakness of the detective-work. You get away with a lot of things with no real resistance. Ask, and everyone will just spill the beans regardless of privacy or their own self-interest.
But even if the challenge is made easier than you'd expect it to be, Quantum still makes players put the pieces together themselves. Flags are quietly set to confirm what the player knows, but it's up to you to figure out where that trail leads. The ZZT restaurant is close by, and it seems like Mr. Vine/Green can be found there often.
At the restaurant, the manager will then reveal that Mr. Vine is no mere regular, but a new hire. Also Bill Gates is here handing out Windows on floppy disk. What a game.
What happens next is another weird idea of how the real world works. Mr. Green steps out of the back to take his lunch break. One of the customers gets up from their booth and proceeds to shove Mr. Green out of his seat and into a wall for no reason other than to be a dick.
This is where I got kind of worried the game had broken down. The green man was obviously Mr. Green, but he wouldn't react at all when I tried to talk to him. Nor would the jerk who stole his seat. I actually tried reloading a save wondering if maybe I was supposed to talk to Green before he was shoved, but no dice.
Instead, one more piece of information is needed, which is to check out a wanted poster for the gray man hanging in the police station, who has connections with the mob. It sets one last flag that allows the events to proceed. And check out that fancy sign they have in there!
This is a major issue with the game. These situations where not having the correct flag turns into everything locking up, with players having to trust that the game didn't break on them. We saw it earlier with the order of operations when escaping the terrorist prison, and here it is again. Quantum does have some awareness that players might be misled, and an object near the entrance is used to prevent allowing you inside until you've found the credit card records. This at least prevents a situation where this scene plays out with no idea that the employee being harassed is Mr. Green.
Green will wait patiently on the ground until the agent identifies him by name. Since the criminal shoved him rather than buddying up with him, the agent decides that Mr. Green must be one of the good guys, and the two team up to apprehend the gangster, leading in to easily of the most iconic moments of the game.
A Looney Toons-esque gauntlet through down an assembly line of an automatic burger maker. The player needs to avoid being cut by slicers, thwacked in the head by heavy equipment, burned to a crisp by an oven, or god forbid sandwiched between two buns.
Getting through unscathed is no easy task, and something I couldn't figure out when I first played. The bun section seemed to be unable to handle a player entering the machine (fair), resulting in a soft-lock. The expectation is for the player to grab on to the pepper machine break a lever off, and use it to pry open a nearby door to make it into the back half of the machinery.
However, the pepper machine doesn't actually hurt you if you're just riding the conveyor past it. And if you try to move off the conveyor to stop yourself from moving and it hits you, it's an instant game over. So after dying to it once, I thought the smart thing to do would be to avoid it.
After detouring through a blink wall filled garbage disposal, there's another machinery board for the fries. It's far more basic than the previous one. No longer being a surprise and being a far simpler device, it just doesn't contribute much. You can, of course, still die by getting caught in the slicer. Beyond that, it's just a less interesting rehash of the previous board. The person you're chasing still nowhere in sight.
Until you arrive wherever this is. This is the first time there's actually been a boss fight in this game. Shooting has been surprisingly limited, and even here Quantum wants the game to be more than just shooting another enemy that's the same as every other boss fight in ZZT. In order to achieve this goal, he makes two unexpected choices for the fight.
Firstly, Mr. Green helps the player out. The two rush in, and Mr. Green will contribute what cane generously be called suppressive fire. This could go very badly, and often when games try your ally ends up shooting you more than any enemies.
To reduce the likelihood of this, Mr. Green is uniquely coded to only shoot OPP SEEK, CW SEEK, and CCW SEEK. Never in the player's direction. While his bullets won't get in your way, Mr. Green is plot critical, and will wander randomly. If you or the terrorist shoot him too many times he will die, ending the game for the player as well.
The other unique part of this fight is how to deal damage. Shooting the criminal elicits no response, and doesn't work at all. (This means Mr. Green isn't actually helping). Bombs then, are the obvious answer, as it's not like they'd be there otherwise.
Ah. Well.
No, he's not lying. The bombs don't do anything either. The actual solution to the fight is kind of absurd. One of the bombs isn't a bomb at all! Instead, it's an energizer in disguise!
Picking it up instantly wins the fight. How anti-climactic. Nothing even explodes at the end of this one.
Mr. Green joins you for the final mission briefing, as he is now an official CIA agent. According to the president, communism has almost been wiped out. The two are then sent to Africa where the last terrorist leader resides.
In contrast to previous town missions. This one doesn't have any exploration. Though you can exit the board from either side, you'll immediately reappear on the opposite. Only two buildings can be entered, with the third being blocked off by Mr. Green until the mission is over. The poor guy has been demoted to roadblock.
One building consists of a refinery where you can earn money to buy the keys to this final base.
Inside you get one last puzzle, and while it makes about as much sense as the light bulb laser on the space station, I can appreciate it for its complexity. The patrolling guards can be killed, but are needed alive for a later part of the plan to work.
You'll notice a lack of entrances to the leader's office. The objective is to find a way to get him to leave into the other room which initially contains a red slime, but eventually after it spreads appears to be on fire.
To do this, players need to find magnetic tapes, put them in a tape recorder, cut the alarm system, open a door with a bomb, and use the bomb to kill the guards. If you do all this correctly, the guards will scream for help as they die horribly, and the tape recorder several rooms away will pick up their screams.
Then, you just play back the recording, which this time the leader is able to hear.
It's the dumbest thing I've ever seen. I can't get over it. It's so good. The leader walks into his lava room? Forgetting it's full of lava? And is killed. By the lava.
You sure did, buddy!
With that, communism is once again just a theory, and America remains a global superpower. H-Hooray?
The ending is pretty comical as well. You have to actually wait around for your plane to be ready for takeoff. For entertainment, there's an actually impressive little jumping arcade game played entirely through flashing text on the bottom of the screen, that incorporates an element of timing by touching the machine again to leap over pits. It's similar to the Kaddar's recent Oktrollberfest game d which features a Nario game played in a single row on the board.
It's actually quite fun! Sadly, the wait for the plane has nothing to do with the game, so even if you do win and run out of activities, you're stuck waiting until the game lets you board. Bizarrely realistic.
To celebrate, the president awards the both of you with medals (enlarged for clarity, Quantum explains). More exciting is that somebody wants to make a movie out of your adventures, which you can then go and actually watch.
What follows is a brief movie to watch where there's some real humor in Mr. Green being the only spy depicted. You, meanwhile are stuck as the driver to get Green out once his mission is finished, and do not make an appearance on screen. It's a good goof.
After the premier, the spies, president, and producer all go out for burgers and the game rolls credits.
Credits which thank all the people that made ZZT games possible including not just Tim Sweeney and Epic MegaGames, but Bill Gates, Microsoft, IBM, Intel, Alan Turing, and Charles Babbage too. A nerd made this game, if you haven't caught on yet.
