Puzzle Spy International came out this week, a game of being an international puzzle spy. That's only part of the picture though: the gameplay consists of myriad illustrated word problems that will test your deduction as well as your vocabulary while you pursue diamond thieves, travel the globe and even defuse a bomb or two.
The game has a cute 1960's spy-thriller theme combined with a Saturday morning cartoon visual direction that work pretty cohesively together. There are dialogue scenes between our protagonist Agent Epsilon and various contacts, suspects and characters you'll run into, making choices about how to respond, in addition to the puzzles getting their own unique layouts and setups, sometimes an illustrated scene and sometimes more of a fill-in-the-blanks notebook/diary type feel.
The mechanics of the game are centered around wordplay and linguistic riddles: one might ask you to properly arrange airport luggage tags according to clues, perhaps to deduce where your target has traveled to next. It seems to be the case that most or all of the puzzles don't give you explicit instructions, instead allowing you to do some lateral thinking on your own to figure out exactly what's being asked of you. That kind of cryptic approach can be very fun, as long as the subtle visual guidance contains enough clues to not leave a player frustrated and confused.
Puzzle Spy International is available now on Steam, currently featuring a 15% launch discount, and a free demo is also available on the page.
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