Tech Support: Error Unknown

Tech Support: Error Unknown is a game with simple yet interesting gameplay and story with multiple endings. You start as a rookie tech support assistant but later in the game, you get more info and information about illegal activities on the network. Tech Support has a lot of problems like lack of explanation for some tasks and bugs, but it's overall a fun game.

There is a slight underlying frustration in Tech Support — an inability to articulate exactly what you want to say. But a part of me feels like it perhaps adds to the experience. There is an overall feeling of being trapped, whether that’s in the endless cycle of query and response, or in the narrative. It plays on the fact that Tech Support is both a permadeath game and one that relies heavily on decision-making and branching narrative paths. On the whole I’m impressed by how much the game accomplishes using comparatively little, building what amounts to, a fairly full-on gaming experience. In many ways, Tech Support could be a hell metaphor for troubleshooters.

A lovely experiment in its own right, Tech Support: Error Unknown is not for the faint of heart. Even at the lowest difficulty, it only comes into its own with an attentive player capable of reading between the lines. Though technical problems exist, they don’t get in the way too much. Recommended for those who’d like to try out something new and different, and don’t have a problem with sticking with the game until it really clicks.

For something intended to be played many times, Error Unknown has a tendency to drag on. It would have benefitted from tightening up, each ‘run’ lasting fewer days in order to maximise novelty and minimise repetition. But despite having more than a few bugs in its execution, Tech Support: Error Unknown just about qualifies as a minimum viable product. Ticket completed.

Tech Support: Error Unknown brings its own ideas to life in great detail, but it's missing the emotional core of Papers, Please.

Despite its flaws, there is some merit to Tech Support: Error Unknown. It does capture the feeling of working in a fast paced support environment. You get a sense of sympathy towards the worker’s plight just by going through the motions. However, it doesn’t do a great job of integrating anything else into the equation due to its unwillingness to open up.