I’m always on the hunt for something new, something different rather than the new Call Of Battle: Field Duty. I just want something that makes me go: Yep! that is different. The guys at Plan of Attack decided to reward my endless hunting spree by offering me a key for Unknown Number: A First Person Talker. This should be fun!

Note: This game was provided for free but that doesn’t mean anything to zozodj2 who will still burn it down if he needs to.

Story:

Ethan Hammer and Amanda Reid intend to steal 7 billion dollars worth of crypto wallets from an oil rig off the shore of the United Kingdom. The oil rig is run by Sligoil corporation, the money belongs to Sligoil’s current owner Lara Sligoil.

As they enter the plant: Ethan and Amanda set off the alarms, in a desperate attempt they dial their technical contact Casey but they dial the wrong number and call you. They need you to bail them out of their predicament and help them further to steal the wallets.

The story delivery is carried out completely through phone calls and voicemails which makes sense. The story isn’t great but is delivered so tightly that it elevates itself.

Sound:

The sound is a different level of awesome.

I would end it there but Hari would beat me to a pulp if I did so let’s dive into the details. The game is quiet when nothing is going on but the second something kicks in the background goes to a level of sound design that is exceptionally impressive, it matches everything that happens in the video feed which is difficult as the video can be showing off a cult, computer schematics, the inside of the oil rig and God knows what else. It’s so nice to have a thought-out background score for a change!

The interaction sounds have been done well too, not as great as the background score but they are still great. Button presses, confirmation tones, and even the sounds that are used for only one puzzle are done well.

The voice acting is also at another level. It might not be the best voice acting ever but the sound control and balance on it makes it feel better than most AAA games. You can feel the emotion that each voice actor is delivering, you can sense their fear, excitement, and annoyance. This is how you do sound-only story delivery.

The sound design has been thought of, designed, and executed with exceptional care which is great to see since it’s usually the graphics who get the platinum treatment and sound is left as a bystander.

Graphics:

The graphics are …interesting. I don’t know how to define them so let’s break this section out into 2 parts. The first part will talk about the stuff you can interact with and the second will talk about the background since the phone is always frontmost.

The phone and the little assistant within it are cleverly done. The assistant is cute and changes his expression depending on what is going on during a call. The phone has a static background while the number pad changes and repositions itself to show clues, progress or provide a visual understanding of what is going on, below the number pad is the call/disconnect button which turns into a timer when the game wants you to do something against the clock. Finally, below the number pad is a little box that shows the strength of your voice as well as the words it has captured from you the player. All these together make a compelling interface that is not only pretty but useful.

As we are talking about the interactable stuff, we must mention the web browser which has gotten none of the treatment the phone has. The web browser is ugly, slow as hell and painful to use. It feels like the designers and developers were exhausted after taking all the loving care they did with the phone and just hacked together something in a hurry for the web browser.

As for the background: When nothing is happening, it is just an animation of the ocean on a loop but when a call is in progress there are movie clips associated with the call. While trippy and occasionally abstract it helps set the tone of the call while strengthening what is being heard.

Gameplay:

The gameplay loop is dead simple: you get a voicemail or a phone call that tells you to call a number along with a clue of sorts, you call that number and then do the task that the voice on the end tells you to do. It’s not complicated which would be quite dull if the tasks and puzzles weren’t well thought out. The puzzles range from playing tic tac toe, moving security guards around, saying stop at the correct time, finding who is on duty, impersonating a person or even deciphering a code in a hurry. The best part? None of the puzzles are repeated except one which is repeated purely to keep the flow going.

My only problem with the core gameplay loop is there is no place to write down what is said on a call. This means that unless you have a photographic memory to recall the numbers along with a hyperactive brain to solve the puzzles mentally, you will need a notebook by your side. This could have been solved very easily with an in-game text editor which seems like an oversight on the developer’s part.

Finally, the core mechanic: Voice control which you use more than your typical input. Voice detection is used for just about all tasks. Anyone who has had the joy of interacting with a voice assistant knows it is a pain, In an attempt to prevent a higher-than-average failure rate; the developers have kept the number of accepted words short with a fallback word if the voice detection flat-out fails. This works and it works quite well most of the time, the only place where it failed horrendously multiple times is when I said “Patel” (a pretty common Indian surname which I should be able to pronounce perfectly), it would always use the fallback word for that instance which was “Kean”. This became annoying since I would have to move officer Keane before trying again. I finally got passed it by putting on my American call centre accent. With that one episode out of the way, I was surprised at how enjoyable it was to use voice detection.

If you paid attention to the graphic section, you will notice that I’ve skipped over the browser. There is a reason for that, a reason so strong that it alone makes me not recommend this game. The reason is that the web browser is an actual web browser and not an in-game prop. This web browser connects to the actual Internet and loads pages from the web including a web page that the game alone needs. If you were saving this game for a rainy day when you couldn’t play your favourite MMO because your net was down: TOUGH SHIT! Let’s add to the damage: Sligoil.com which you need to access often enough to find information to solve puzzles is going to expire on the 23rd of August 2023, yes there are only 9 months left before the game becomes unplayable because a domain expired! This is beyond belief stupid, whoever thought this was a good idea should be told to kindly shut the fuck up at the next meeting. I don’t care that they can renew it. Until a patch is released that moves the Sligoil website in-game I will recommend against buying this game.

Wait! the damage is not done yet. To finish the game you have to call an actual phone number that is registered in the United Kingdom. Yes! let’s add international calling charges to this mess of bad ideas. I wonder how long that number is valid.

Last minute insert: I just checked the site before posting and while the home page works, the inside pages which are needed have failed. Good going idiots!

Corrections:

Plan Of Attack has let me know that the site is set for auto renew, while that might be better it is still not solving the problem that there is a date for expiry.
Apparently there is a second way to finish the game but again since the game will not be perfect one day

I’m stating here publicly that I made mistakes in these two points but they will not change the score in the slightest till everything is moved in game so that the game can work without any external sources.

Conclusion:

Saying this game had great promise would be an understatement. A good story, mostly great graphics accompanied by outstanding sound with a surprisingly fun gameplay loop would have put this game at the top of my recommendations while scoring it at 8/10 once they patched in a notepad. All that work is thoroughly destroyed by two exceptionally dumb moves: The web browser connecting to a website that expires in 9 months and needing the player to make an international call to see the result of everything they have done.

Don’t buy it unless you are fine with a game that expires (which you shouldn’t be).

Recommended Purchase Price: $1 or ₹50

Final Score: 4/10

Pros	Cons
Good Story	Crypto seems like a dumb thing to steal
Outstanding Sound	None
Great Graphics	Dated web browser
Voice detection works	You might need to fake an accent
Great Gameplay	Game is going to die because of external forces