Power Line is a narrative driven game that is inspired by the real Nintendo Power Line game call center, where players were able to call a physical phoneline and get hints when they were stuck in Nintendo games. It’s an interesting job, and one that no longer is a thing due to the nature of the internet, but back in the 1980s was in demand.
In Power Line your job is to answer the phone and help people out with a fictional game, one that you have never played both in the game and in real life. You have applied and got the job despite having lied on your resume. They feel that you are perfect for the job, so must answer the phone and be able to decide what the response is to any of the questions anyone had about the game.
These questions are fully voice acted, with confused gamers calling you and asking where secret items are or if there are alternative endings to the game beyond the one that they have got. It’s interesting to hear about this game you’ve never played, and in Power Line, there is a lot of strange questions! You have three options that you can pick, as a reply, to each of them. However, there isn’t any sort of feedback on what is right or wrong and there is no way to get more information out of them.
Instead, you need to wait until the end of the work day so that you can see if you are fired or if you have somehow passed your first day without actually knowing the game at all. Power Line is still in active development, so I do hope that they add new ways to interact with the story and more ways to find out what the answers are.
I got the chance to play the demo at MCM Comic Con, ahead of it’s full release. For now, you can play the demo on itch.io.