Switchboard

A narratively-rich and often frantic management game centred around a switchboard operator that gets caught in between a corrupt government, a struggling workers' union and her own poverty. You play as Ms. Lister, who has begun a new job connecting phone calls for the town and its military base. She gets paid more for successfully connecting more calls (amongst other tasks) and must make enough money each day to keep herself from going bankrupt. The game eases you in for the first few days to allow for learning the complexity of using the switchboard, after which the gameplay becomes much more fast-paced. Eventually you might be managing up to six calls at once while taking notes on their contents and looking through multiple sets of instructions and directories to avoid making mistakes that would dock your pay. It feels satisfying to beat your own records as the difficulty increases, mirroring Lister's own growth through the narrative as she gains more and more competence and influence over the world's events. It's impossible to do everything in one playthrough (Which takes roughly 2-3 hours), and you're often forced to choose between working hard for more money or taking it slower and actually reading the call transcripts, so to get everything this game has to offer you're looking at several runs. There are a lot of choices to make and a lot of charming side-stories to look for in the calls that you might usually put on mute in favour of the more narratively important calls. The story itself is incredibly well-written and largely delivered through stylish text-based cutscenes after each day of work. During these scenes we gain context for the things Lister is doing at work and how they relate to her personal life, leading to a lot of moral dilemmas around how much she should risk/sacrifice and for whom. tl;dr is that this game is unique, replayable and clearly a labour of love from a talented solo developer.

I really liked playing this game :) The voice acting is really good, and the gameplay is great, although can get a little frantic. There is a mechanic in the game where the government wants you to monitor if a call happens between two people. I unintentionally went down a unionist story path because I was simply unable to pay attention to where calls were coming from as I was moving as fast as I could to get everybody connected. On a similar note, I'm pretty sure there was a ton of content that I missed in this game, simply because I was too locked-in to read the phone calls. The phone lines look a little unpolished (just being lines instead of a modelled wire), and your desk space seems a little barren, but I didn't notice this much in the heat of a shift. My first playthrough took about 3 hours, and I'll definitely enjoy it again if I go back through to get another ending.

It's just a cozy game for the likes of us. Listen in on some drama... or the new man next door...

An engaging game with political thoughts and consequences. Highly recommended for anyone who enjoys the "Not For Broadcast" Series. :-)