Nelson Tethers: Puzzle Agent

I recently played the game Nelson Tethers: Puzzle Agent. It's a computer/iThings game that is also available through the PlayStation Network, for those of you that don't own anything more Apple than...well...an apple, or don't feel like downloading games onto your computer, be it for preserving a dinosaur or paranoia (I don't blame you).

The story delves into the one-man Puzzle Agency sector of the FBI. The lone agent, Nelson Tethers, is called to rural, wintry Scoggins, Minnesota. The Scoggins eraser factory, supplier of the White House's erasers, has shut down after a mysterious incident, and it's up to Agent Tethers to solve the mystery and get a fresh supply of erasers before the President has to strike things out for lack of a better correction method.

As the premise probably suggests, the plot is rather amusing, with characters that personify a quirky little town in the middle of Where The Hell Am I. It's rather short, though, and leaves with only one question answered at the end after leaving another plotstring in blatantly untied view and hinting at several other "wait, WHAT?" points. It's perfect for a sequel, for which there already is -- Puzzle Agent 2 was released by Telltale Games was released at the end of June for computer/iThings.

Since it is a game primarily based on puzzles, and since it is a game, the gameplay, of course, is a serious factor. The puzzle games weren't impossible; I was able to blast through most of them, to be honest, though some took some good thought and there was one towards the end that I got REALLY stuck on (by this I mean "I spent two hours with sleep in between trying to get the damn pattern right"). So, they're not the hardest in the world, but they're good exercise for one's mind. There's a variety of puzzles, from straight out stare at the answers and use logic to a wee bit of math to turning panels in order to make a viable path to the goal. There were also a few jigsaw-style puzzles, where you had to arrange things in a certain way - i.e., at the very beginning of the game, you have to reconstruct a ripped up piece of paper to read a hidden message. Although these sound like they would be difficult, the game has a mechanism where the pieces snap together when they're in the right position, like an online jigsaw puzzle can. This makes it a lot easier, and there was one puzzle (right after the one I got stuck on) that I literally was able to do by dragging one piece around, randomly dropping and collecting until the entire thing was done. As such, these puzzles seemed kind of extraneous, but without that mechanism they would have seemed ridiculously hard.

All in all, the short time I spent on this game was really enjoyable. It tickled and engaged the mind all at the same time.