Unravel a real-life conspiracy in this interactive crime thriller
Alan Wake 2 has been out for over a week now, and it’s already become the topic of many a watercooler conversation here at Polygon. The long-anticipated follow-up is a top-to-bottom redesign of Remedy Entertainment’s 2010 action-horror game, introducing new puzzle and combat conceits and the parallel campaigns of protagonists Saga Anderson and Alan Wake.
One of the boldest new mechanics the game introduces is Saga’s “Mind Place,” an interactive 3D space that allows you to look over clues (in the form of photos and flash cards you acquire throughout the game) and assemble them into maps of connections on a wall called the case board. Doing so advances the story. And aside from being a novel means of immersing the player in the evolving narrative of the game’s mystery, Alan Wake 2’s case board is the latest example of the detective story trope of the so-called conspiracy board, in which a collage of media from different sources is connected by lines of red string.
The conspiracy board can be seen in multiple TV shows and movies, from True Detective and It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia to The Silence of the Lambs and The Usual Suspects. It was even present in 2007’s BioShock. If you’re looking for a mystery to dive into after you’re done trudging through the dark woods and even darker alternate dimensions of Alan Wake 2, you should playA Hand with Many Fingers, an investigative thriller game in which you connect the dots behind a real-life Cold War conspiracy involving the CIA. Yes, I’m being serious!
Created by David Cribb, a Canberra-based developer who makes politically focused games under the pseudonym “Colestia,” A Hand with Many Fingers places players in the role of a grad student who is sent to a CIA archive in
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