This Bomb Disposal Sim Is A Great Party Game

I wasn't even holding a controller the first time I played one of the best games I've tried this year. I was given a pen, postcard, and a binder manual, only a dozen or so pages long. I was the 'expert,' and in all my expertise I wrote my name under 'defuser' by accident. I was a first time explosives savant in Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes, an Ottawa-made Oculus Rift game that turns bomb disposal into a great party game.

"I'm going to do the wires," said my Oculus wearing partner, who I had never met before this session. I asked him to tell me what he saw, when he just started listing off colours. "Blue, black, black, white, black, yellow." Knowing each colour's order and sum were integral conditions to know which one he'd have to cut. I hadn't even considered them being horizontal or vertical to be a factor, something that would prove fatal my next game.

"We wanted to come up with situations where information could be split between players," said Ben Kane, one of the game's developers. "We decided to arrange it so they'd be working together instead of independently. Shouting is definitely part of it, but the fun in communication is really our primary goal."

The game was inspired by something they encountered at this year's Global Game Jam. Their team brought the Oculus dev kit for an outing, when other developers started gathering around it like it was a spectacle.

The team wanted to make a party game for the Oculus, which is a tall order when only one person can see something the others can't. That's what led them to the bomb chase, the Hollywood trope of one sweaty wreck of an isolated technician braving a bomb alone, usually with a headset connected to a faraway professional relaying advice.

With time on the clock you can imagine things can get heated, frustrating, rewarding, and intensive. You'll truly be able to test your friend's character on who will remain collected and who will just start yelling "MANCY."

"Oculus seems to be generating ideas that are less traditional," said Kane, "as far as what people's expectations are of games. It's nice that you can go into a game or experience not knowing what the standard rules are going to be. There's so many strange things happening with the Oculus Rift, people are exploring to see what can work."

That first time playing was successful. My partner and I actually defused the device. The developers stamped my postcard with a thick blue "DEFUSED." Now I wanted to sit in the other seat, this time pairing up with one of the developers, Allen Pestaluky, to be the hands behind the bomb disposal. Using the same time limit, five minutes, but adding a fourth puzzle, I was smug and still riding my first victory.

Now I got to see the bomb. On a table in a grey room, the suitcase shaped device hovered over an alarm clock and a record player. It was divided into 12 grids, six on each side, with cubbies for the 'modules,' each containing a different puzzle needs to be addressed in its own way.

"Is there a pin slot on the bottom?" he asked.

"On the bottom of what?"

"The bomb, like you'd see on a computer?"

I flipped the bomb to see its base. "Oh, I see one."

"Is it long?"

"Define long…"

I decided to begin with the wires, again, thinking I had them mastered from my first go. This time they were vertical, which I didn't know would make such a massive difference. I didn't even notice the star symbols and lights on either end of each wire. The most obvious variance to someone seeing the puzzle for the first time was that one wire was striped instead of solid.

"The best is when the expert discovers it during gameplay," said Kane, "go completely silent, diffuser starts to panic, and the experts say, 'let's go to something else.'"

Solving this module took up four minutes, and we still had three more to deal with. One was a button puzzle, which I helped solve the last time, dependant on the colour of the button and surrounding features. One was a code encryption. I didn't even get a look at the third one before I blew up.

Ben told me the reason the current build has such a difficulty jump is because they first developed it to have a lifespan, a difficulty that would stop anyone from being able to get so knowledgeable on the game that they wouldn't need a partner. When they started to demo, they found they may have gone too far, and that juicy middle that connects both ends is in the works. "Short answer is that it's still under development."

And so I had both experiences. As a defuser, I failed, but as an expert, on the manual, I succeeded. Maybe it's a pride thing, but I'll weigh my sentiment on the win. After all, that role required both communication and reading comprehension. This is what I will tell myself.

The Oculus is certainly getting developers out of their comfort zone. I haven't used a pen and paper in conjunction with a video game since Clue on the Sega Genesis, and the use of the Oculus' limits, and the tests of people's senses, makes Keep Talking one of the most interesting games I've seen on the device so far.

"One scenario that we would have really liked to fit in would have been, like, 'Speed,'" says Kane, "but placing the game on a moving bus was just going to be a little more effort. We'll wait for the next one."