Review: THE OPERATOR is an immersive mystery game

The operator is a new indie game from Bureau81 and indienova that will test your skills to uncover the truth. You take on the role of a Federal Department of Intelligence (FDI) operative in 1992, but as you help agents work their cases, a mystery unfolds and danger escalates.

The team was kind enough to provide me with a review code, but all thoughts below are my own. You can grab your copy now on Steam to play on PC for about $14 (10% off until August 5th at $12.59).

Welcome to FDI. As our newest operator, your role is to use your investigative skills to assist our field agents and investigate mysterious crimes. Use cutting-edge FDI software to search for clues, solve puzzles, and uncover the truth.

Here are my revelations. First, I am a sucker for these detective puzzle games. I love them. Second, I finished the game. It took me just under four hours total. Third, I didn’t encounter any game-breaking glitches/bugs, but I know some people have.

I understand that the development team is working hard to fix all these issues and seems to welcome any feedback to fix the game, including typos. Fourth, you can play The operator on Steam Deck, but I would highly recommend having at least an external keyboard to use instead of the on-screen one. For this reason, I’ve found it much easier to just use my gaming PC rather than my Steam Deck.

Visually, The operator It’s very interesting. The Bureau81 team did a phenomenal job with the aesthetics of a computer in the early 90’s. The UI is very well done and it felt like I was on a computer.

The photos used help you connect with the agents you end up working with to enhance your immersion. That said, the team made the interesting but intentional decision to make everything outside of the screen extremely blurry.

After logging out of your computer, there are a few scenes that show you going home, trying to wind down for the evening, and then getting ready for work before logging back in. However, you can’t make anything out due to the levels of blurriness. I would think this conflicts with an endgame puzzle, but I could see how not having the blur would make it too easy, so I’m torn on this one.

Talking about the audio, I really like it. The operator. I thought the voice acting was funny, the sound effects were perfect, and the music was phenomenal. All of these factors really suck you into the game. When the mystery increases and the music changes, you feel the pressure. I love the sound design of this game.

A game like The operator it’s really story-driven. I won’t give away any spoilers here because it’s a very short game, but I’ll speak in very broad and general terms. The story sucked me in almost immediately. There were things I didn’t like and then “coincidences” started to happen.

As I played, things got more and more intense, some things changed, and it was a dream game. Towards the end, some things happened and I thought this game had multiple endings and I thought I knew where I was supposed to go back to. However, it is important to note that The operator It has only one ending.

After finishing the game, I thought it was really good, but I wasn’t entirely satisfied with the ending. I’m so torn because it was really well done, but I felt like there should have been more to the ending. Maybe I’m missing something? There are four hidden objectives that I didn’t find after all.

At the end of the day, The operator It was an amazing gameplay experience. It nailed 90-95% of everything. I think it’s awesome, although I wish there was something that helped make the ending more satisfying.

It might need another 20-30 minutes of content to make it more satisfying, or I might even announce a sequel, which probably won’t be coming out anytime soon, since the game just launched this week.

I’d love to hear your thoughts on the game, and I’d love to know if I’m wrong about how satisfying the ending is or not. I loved the twists (even the ones I expected) and I don’t regret the time I spent playing it.