In order to best enjoy Puzzle Spy International, it’s really useful to know what it’s not. This collection of thematic puzzles is not a lengthy game filled with multiple missions, nor a deep, narrative adventure—two ideas you might get from just glancing at its screenshots. This is a reasonably brief, but completely delightful, collection of 11 super-interesting challenges, rather loosely strung together by a fun if frivolous story, with a whole lot of bonus flirting.
Agent Epsilon works for Puzzle Spy International, a worldwide group of special agents skilled in cracking the codes and matching the mysteries of puzzle-leaving criminals. You know the sorts, the types who’ll steal one of the world’s most valuable diamonds and then leave a series of extra-challenging conundrums hinting as to their whereabouts and plans. It’s only fair, after all.
As Epsilon, you are tasked with unraveling these posers as you travel around the world, chatting with an excellent mix of characters and trying your best to recover the Eswatini Giant, a diamond stolen from a museum in Rome. What this boils down to is a fun, banter-y bit of chat with each country’s main character, with the option of some flirting, and then solving a tricksy puzzle. And boy, they’re really good puzzles!
There’s a note at the start of Puzzle Spy International that suggests that while the game is absolutely designed to be played solo—as I did—it can be even more fun if you have one or two other people around the screen, working on the challenges together. And I fully endorse that message: These are the sorts of stumpers where it would be a great deal of fun to have someone else to bounce ideas off of, given almost none of them are straightforward. Oftentimes a large part of the challenge is figuring out what the puzzle is actually asking you to do, experimenting with ideas until you crack the concept, and then the meatier task of working it all through. I had a great time doing that solo, but I kept thinking how it’d be even better to have a friend alongside.
To give you an example, the very first puzzle is a fascinating combination of tasks, where you’re given ten moveable pictures, ten peculiar instructions, and then a row of ten slots into which to place the pictures in a particular order. Underneath all this is an answer field that wants you to enter three words, the first two each being two letters long, the third seven. So with 11 letters to find and ten images and instructions, you’re already scratching your head. So you try stuff! Everything can be moved around the screen like paper on a table, so why not try matching up “Change one letter to make it wooden” to one of the ten images? Or “Remove all but a body part.” One of those has to go with the picture of Shakespeare, or the bull made of stars, right? Each image comes with interactive fields where you can type in the name, and then underneath the result of applying the instruction. Then with the order fathomed, you can piece together how you get 11 letters out of all that. And that’s just the first one!
Should that all became far too bemusing, there’s a really fantastic hint system in the game that’ll not only provide you with a series of non-spoilery suggestions for progress before starting to get a little more blatant, but also create unique nudges for specific elements of each puzzle, as well as always offering to let you check your answers if you want to make sure you’ve not goofed along the way. And rather splendidly, Puzzle Spy International makes clear at the start that it doesn’t record how often you use the hint button, nor rate your success differently if you do. It’s about solving tricky puzzles at your own pace!
My only disappointment is that it is only 11 puzzles. It feels very brief, and while the game describes itself as “2 to 11 hours” long, it’s very much at the shorter end of that scale. I finished the lot easily in under three hours. I’d love a second or a third mission, although given the game’s only $10 and primarily the work of two people, I get why it’s just the one. And importantly, those three hours were all late one when evening after I should have gone to sleep: I figured I’d quickly try out the game, and then I figured I’d do just one more puzzle, and then there was another, and eventually I’d rolled credits and it was the early hours of the morning. Which hopefully conveys how engaging it all was!
There’s a demo on Steam which consists of a whole other puzzle that’s not in the game itself, so you can get an idea of whether or not this is your sort of thing without taking anything away from the full game! Amazing! So go in knowing this is brief, and aware that a couple of the puzzles are oddly straightforward, and with the correct expectations, this is a lovely little thing. It’s bright, cheerful, progressive and extremely intelligent. Like you!
