Eurogamer plays the Steam Next Fest demo for The Operator, and this 1992 computer detective game has us glued to our screens.
You know the fantasy already. An FBI agent calls their office to have someone run a check on a piece of information. It might be a person’s name, a car licence plate, or some surveillance footage. Whatever it is, the person on the other end of the line has to do some invisible wizardry and then return the pertinent facts to the agent, fast. The agent then hangs up and the story moves on, and that invisible voice on the phoneline who did all the hard work is forgotten forever. But not any more.
The Operator is a game about being that invisible person on the other end of the line. Which, I know, sounds unglamorous. But what’s so special about the Steam Next Fest demo for The Operator is how exciting it makes that job feel in the moment. Yes, you might be operating an in-game computer terminal to comb through CCTV footage, interview transcripts and images and so on, but you’re also pivotal to the case. You’re the one joining the dots. And right from the off, developer Bureau 81 breathes maximum life and energy into it.
Case in point: you’re thrown right into the thick of things from the moment the demo begins. A blinding overhead light sears your vision in a dark room, and a voice asks – in a lie detector kind of way – who you are and what you know.
