Secret Agent Chronicles

Oh nice, this game has chapters. This one is about some impostors and not to spoil it or anything, but the subplot about them takes up very little of this actual defined part of the game.

Agent Bill just ruins some crops by having to land the plane somewhere planes do not land normally. This is not a stealthy approach.

The author(s) also learned a little and put up a helpful sign to let you know that there's a board connected here.

The farmhouse pales in size to the many many fields that surround it. There are a few chickens and "chicklets" in the pens that stand perfectly still.

The home itself is loaded with locked doors. A woman is cooking up some food while her husband sits at the table. She won't say anything except how she needs to finish making dinner. Her husband is more cooperative.

The old "unlocked door" trick. Works every time. The farmer's got some loose lips that smart CIA agents like Bill can use to deduce something is up.

There is one open passage, and it leads to the basement, which like the one in the gas station is dark. Unlike the gas station, there are no more torches to collect so you do need to be kind of quick about finding your objective in this otherwise empty room.

The cellar contains a couple who have been captured and held in their basement by the folks upstairs, the impostors.

This doesn't seem like a very good plan for these guys at the lab to just keep this guy who knows too much imprisoned in his own home instead of eliminating them or keeping them elsewhere and having the house be abandoned.

The man wants very much to take action, but the CIA hasn't backed this uprising so Bill says he'll deal with it instead.

Now that Bill knows the truth. It's time to figure what to do about it.

The obvious answer doesn't work, so I was kind of stuck here.

It turns out, that you need to talk with the woman again. When she's first untied, she thanks Bill and nothing more, which compared to the long explanation about the impostors from the man led me to believe that was all she was going to do.

The medkit she gives Bill restores 10 health. The key opens up the backdoor of the home.

In the back yard there's a phone and we get to call in the S.W.A.T. team.

This causes two blue objects to pop out of the empty looking spots in the wall and confront the impostors.

Surprisingly, given this game's violent streak, they go peacefully and are escorted away. Except that didn't result in more keys so once again I was stuck.

Turns out, there's another path from the field Bill landed the plane in. While not exactly obvious, the slightly off path is at least somewhat indicative of an exit. I sure didn't notice it until after looking at the game in the file viewer.

I'm really not sure what I'm looking at here. I think it might be a downward spiral? The next room has some underground vibes but I can't be sure.

The bunker, as I'm dubbing it, looks to be empty, save for a lone computer in the corner.

The plot thickens? We already know this is the bad guy. I guess this is just to let us know this is another D base.

SUDDENLY A FIREFIGHT. I have no idea where these guys came from, but the friends in green shoot at the bad guys in brown.

For some reason one of the bad guys just stops shooting after he manages to get the only casualty on the green team's side.

The rest of the team seems pretty nonplussed about the loss.

Meanwhile the person in brown is still upset, as touching them results in an instant game over (surprisingly with no description of how you're killed.)

I finish him off to avenge the fallen, and pick up the two keys. Progress.

While one of the keys is to the back of the property, the other is the key to the upstairs area. This is an incredibly weird room. It has the other key, and a single ZZT gem for one health. I don't understand why this is here instead of just giving the player the last two keys in the bunker. Also it could just be one key in the bunker. Why are there two doors?

Anyway, that's the last key, and it's time to be done with these impostors and see if we can find out anything about this strange lab.

Ah, there it is. And there's the giant robot the farmer discovered, just wandering around shooting at random and threatening to destroy anything that moves.

There is a witness to this robot rumpus: this lone man offering to sell a an access card for 30 gems. Okay, so there was a purpose to that lone gem in the attic. Only 29 to go, but there are no real leads as to where to go.

Ah. Well.

Just down the road is a mining facility with plenty of miners already hard at work.

Fortunately, it's open to the public. I love the "Uh Oh" response if you don't have a gem, which causes the man who I presume to be JJ, to say "okay" if you select it.

Honestly the weirdest thing about this segment is the similarity to having to hunt for treasure in The Lost Monkeys.

Everybody inside the mine is rather rude.

As you'd expect, the player needs to find a bunch of hidden objects in here that give out gems. Most of them are clearly distinct, but this last one that has the biggest prize matches its surroundings perfectly. You technically don't need all of them, but what's skippable is just like a single tree.

After paying the exit fee (what a scam), and buying the access card, Bill is ready to begin the next part of his mission. Oh, I guess I shot the robot at some point since it's gone too.

Something rather odd here is that these empties from the outside to the main entrance are empties with stats, colloquially known as "black-holes". When the player walks past the door, they wind up being immediately transported to this tile as each empty's stat also gets a turn to act with the player on top of it, causing extra movements.

That's how I felt too.

Just like last time, there's no plan for what to do once inside.

Would I?!

Well, not yet. For now I turn down the guard's offer to check out what's going on in the other room with the duplicators.

It turns out to be a source of infinite health and ammo via these boxes, but the duplicators run too slowly to really exploit it. There's also this weird enemy the game calls "creature" that moves around and shoots before being taken down in two hits (or one bomb).

It turns out that if you say you want to join the D Corporation you're first asked to prove yourself by defeating the creature. The guard puts one and one together and moves out of the way once you kill the foe regardless of whether or not you agreed to join or not.

Everybody's super excited to be here.

Blocking the path is the lady who thanks Bill for joining. Bill didn't plan on signing up, and does his narration via quotes again as he realizes that his apparently unintended infiltration of the enemy forces might actually be useful.

Up ahead are several scientists and one different colored object working on the latest rockets. Every single one of them is too busy to talk making this board just a set piece.

Followed by this hallway that splits into two rooms and a passage with only one opening currently.

I'd complain about how these boxes appear as just solid walls and thus don't stand out as something that can be interacted with, but there's nothing else to interact with so they wind up standing out by just existing.

Plus, you have to find this next part of the secret code to open up the path to the other room on the board.

Whoa, honest to goodness spying! Bill stands outside the door and listens in on the conversation between Dr. H and G. Man. I have no idea if the G is for "green" or if this is supposed to be the mysterious figure from Valve's Half-Life series.

Agent Bill is caught yet again, and as usual he panics his way into a solution. In this case volunteering to pilot the experimental rocket ship.

Poor Bill.

This ship looks so bad. I'm certain it's a death-trap.

Also you can of course get yourself killed by slamming into the wall.

Doing things properly causes the nose of the rocket to move and allow the player access to a passage to the next board.

Full of stars. Etc. Etc.

So now Bill is in space, the rocket looks slightly nicer, and there are some new things to interact with.

Meanwhile everyone at CIA HQ is telling him to get his ass back down. This involves solving a puzzle first.

I'm being incredibly generous in calling it a puzzle. Bill needs to put on the space suit before he opens the airlock. That's all.

If you activate the self-destruct, you're killed in the explosion. You can also fire the ship's lasers which shockingly does not cause you to get a game over for blowing up whatever it was pointed at.

The correct thing to do, is let the villains successfully launch their satellite weapon into space and then just leave it there.