Archive.org’s in-browser DOSBox emulator is one of the greatest tools available for retro gamers. Many years ago I came across Floor 13 on one of the abandonware sites that were popular in the early 2000s. Back then it made a huge impression on me and I loved the game. Recently I was thinking of it and hoped it would be available on Archive.org. Luckily it is. Of all the old-school DOS games out there, I stump hard for Floor 13. Masters of Orion and all the LucasArts games have plenty of fans out there. Floor 13 has me.
The premise is simple. You are the head of a secret police force tasked with keeping the British Prime Minister popular and winning elections. You accomplish this through all sorts of nefarious deeds: home invasions, illegal surveillance, disinformation campaigns, kidnappings, and assassinations are all at your disposal. Each action serves a particular role in completing the randomly assigned story chapters. But beware. Kill too many troublemakers and the press will catch on. When that happens, you might attempt fly from your 13th floor office like your predecessor.
The gameplay is broken up into small missions. The missions are self-contained puzzles that can be solved in multiple ways for varying degrees of success. For example, one mission involves a government bigwig and his mistress. If you take too long, she ends up dead causing a huge scandal in the papers. One fast way to “solve” it and cause a smaller scandal is to kidnap her yourself. Then she won’t get murdered but the papers will report her disappearance. Unfortunately for her, you can’t allow these prisoners to talk to you’ll end up dumping her in the river; she still ends up as a corpse. There is a better solution that will save her life but it is more work and if your PM has a 20 point lead in the polls, it might be worth it to take the small scandal and resulting hit in popularity.
The missions are points of strength and weakness for the game. They act like adventure game puzzles; once you know the solution there is not much there. But upon every play through you will receive missions in random order and are not notified if you’ve completed the mission “correctly.” The most feedback you will get is a newspaper headline and a penalty to the polls if you fail. After a certain length a time you will receive a report explaining that all files related to a certain mission have been removed. This signals the absolute end of the mission no matter what actions you have or have not taken. You will need to juggle multiple missions and judiciously allocate resources. Convince yourself, “Oh she’s trustworthy, I don’t need to set a tail on her,” and you may free up a pursuit team for a better suspect. Or maybe she wasn’t trustworthy and you missed her meet a contact and pass along sensitive documents.
In this way, Floor 13 is almost a rogue-like. It is a difficult game to beat unless you know the positive solutions to the missions. The odds of a player working through the entire game without being fired or taking a high-rise swan dive are extremely low. As you sit through repeated plays, you will see the same missions with the understanding that each attempt you will try a new strategy until you discover what works most effectively. It is a fun system that provides players with lots of agency and multiple solutions.
Archive.org has lots of DOSBox games to play in-browser. Floor 13 works extremely well since it only uses the arrows and the Enter key. Even with the limited input, navigating the game’s menus is easy. The black-and-white noir aesthetic not only looks awesome, but is also sharp and easy to read even when played full-screen. Considering the uniqueness of the game and the bare minimum barrier to entry, every retro gamer should at least try Floor 13.
The Keasy Depot 