Review: Mein Auftrag (German detective game)
This Alexa Skill is currently Germany’s most popular interactive story #VoiceFirst game. While it’s unfortunate that this game is ‘hidden’ behind a language barrier for much of the international community, this shouldn’t keep us from analyzing what makes this game so successful.
What is this game about?
In this game, you assume the role of the private detective Steven Brown, and conduct your current mission of resolving the murder of Mrs Thompson’s nephew Noah.
The story itself is a solid detective story with elements of careful observation, shifty characters, unusual methods of obtaining evidence and surprising turns. It stretches over two days (in-game) and takes you to various places in England, from London over Liverpool to Sheffield and York.
What makes this game stand out?
There are several factors worth mentioning. Let’s be diligent detectives and investigate them one by one:
- Alexa as your sidekick
We already saw this narrative point of view in ‘The Magic Door’, but this game goes some steps further. Alexa’s role is a mixture of Dr. Watson and your secretary, and her assistance ranges from analyzing a retrieved notebook to comments like ‘Grab your notepad and comb your hair, we’re meeting a customer!’.
For me, this active role and the tonge-in-cheek characterisation contribute a lot to the game’s charm. - Slow, but rich storytelling
The plot unfolds at a very slow speed… Some scenes cover as little story as leaving your hotel room and going to the lobby. Interstingly, this doesn’t make the game boring: Every scene has both one or more well-matching audio effects, and Alexa’s enjoyable comments. - Singe-option interactions
This is probably the most untypical feature of the interactive story games I reviewed so far: Most interactions (about 80%) are not decisions, but ways to say ‘continue’!
This sounds very counterintuitive, so here’s an example:
Alexa: ‘You’re at the train station. To enter the train to York, say “Enter the train”.’
You can also say ‘menu-like’ things like ‘Help’, ‘Repeat’ and ‘Stop’, but the bottom line is that there’s no actual choice involved.
It’s probably a style question whether or not players like this kind of interaction, and in some moments it does indeed feel unnatural to parrot Alexa with ‘Enter the train’. But juding from the reviews and the game’s success, most players (including me)do not actually perceive this as negative. - A riddle to be solved
Throughout the story, you encounter numbers like 16, 22 and 19, and your smart assistant Alexa emphasized those very much — She even advises you to write those numbers down. The recurrence of those numbers keeps you from getting too passive.
If you’re like me, you’ll think that you can certainly remember those numbers without writing them down, until you notice that you need all 8 of them to solve the final riddle. This is actually the main driver of retention, since you’ll need two or three attempts to pick up all the numbers from the story.
Is there any way in which this game could be more enjoyable?
While ‘Mein Auftrag’ has a well-deserved second place in the German Alexa Skill store’s featured list, there are some weaknesses that a comparable game might improve upon:
- Offer more choices
While the game builds a lot f immersion by atmospheric storytelling, I actually miss some degree of autonomy beyond ‘Which room do you want to search first?’.
I am very much aware that enabling more choice comes at the cost of creating more content. From ‘Mr. Robot: The Daily Five/Nine’, we learned about a nice middle gound for this dilemma: Fake choices offer different ways to perform a given task and let the player identify more with the character, while the different choices’ storylines converge again after the task has been completed. - Offer savepoints
When playing the game again after the first round (in order to get al the numbers to solve the riddle), the short scenes reveal their double edge: It becomes frustrating to let the story unfold slowly all over again — Even with the option to skip single scenes.
Savepoints would be a sweet compromise: Once the player has ‘unlocked’ a particular location (like Sheffield), he gets a password (‘Sheffield’) and can use it to jump directly to the location (Sheffield) when re-playing the game. - Avoid loops
With ‘loops’, I mean situations where the player has to make a decision between option A and B, and after picking one option (let’s say A), he returns to the same situation and is asked to choose between A and B all over again. There are several ‘loop’ situations in this game, and the resulting decrease in immersion effectively neutralizes engagement (in terms of involvement and sense of autonomy) that the choice generated. - Keep Alexa in-character
In general, this game is a prime example for ‘playing’ with Alexa as a character (I plan a separate article on this topic), but there are two or three moments when Alexa says something condescending or downright vulgar, which immediately alienates me and breaks 100% of the immersion.
That sounds pretty bad! What’s the conclusion, Sherlock?
This Alexa Skill still ranges among the most enjoyable interactive stories out there, and I would be glad if I had the capacity to produce anything that came even close.
With which points do you agree or disagree? What was helpful to you? I care to make these articles as valuable to you as possible, so any feedback is greatly appreciated. Thanks for reading!
