A Hand With Many Fingers is a first-person investigation game about a real Cold War conspiracy. Explore the CIA's murky history of drug smuggling, regime change, and assassination.
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A Hand With Many Fingers excels at a difficult task, which is establishing a strong tone and sticking with it for the entire runtime. There's the little paranoia that digs at you from the beginning, dog-eared by a sense of intrigue — ooh, uncovering a CIA conspiracy, what fun! — that gradually starts to erode at you as the mystery gets harder to keep track of and sudden phone calls provide nothing but dead air on the other end. Fluorescent lights crack, pop, and flicker as you walk through the long corridors of the basement archives, waiting for something to inevitably be waiting for you around a corner; the sounds of footsteps and clattering boxes draw you upstairs only to find that there's nothing there; lights across the street turn off when you look at them; cars park and peel away moments later, making it impossible to tell if they're staking you out. These are all little twists of the screw that compound the (intentional) frustration that'll start eroding from your ankles up as you flick back and forth between your real-world notes and the articles pinned to the corkboard. I know Michael Hand was in 'Nam in 1965, but the archives don't go back that far, and even if they did, Paul Helliwell's Washington accounts that should be in OS 267/4 are all missing, and the other boxes are all marked to be destroyed. These little facts pile up on you — Bernie Houghton was in both the Middle East and Africa with Ed Wilson, who was in Hong Kong back in '77 with Michael Hand, and Hand was in both Sydney and Southeast Asia with Frank Nugan — and none of it really adds up beyond the fact that all of these men are involved in a great and terrible gunrunning scheme between the CIA and the Contras. The broad strokes are there, the general gist of things is there, but it's the exact details that elude you beyond the game and into reality once you look up the Nugan Hand Bank and realize that all of this shit really happened.
Allegedly. I want to stress that this shit all actually happened allegedly. There's no proof that the CIA was involved in the criminal dealings of the Nugan Hand Bank. Nugan's suicide is only allegedly suspicious, given that the gun he shot himself with was wiped clean of fingerprints. William Colby's business card was found in Nugan's pocket when he died, and Colby was at one time the Director of the CIA, which raised some questions. Just some questions, though! Questions which were asked by people who, at the time, were incredibly shocked that the New South Wales investigatory commission ruled out American involvement without really even looking into it. This is the same New South Wales government body who are, as it is commonly known today, ridiculously corrupt and — allegedly! — propped up by the Alameddine crime family. Oh, and Ferdinand Marcos worked with the Nugan Hand Bank, too. Why would the president of the Philippines launder his gold buillion through an Australian bank that had $80 in liquid assets and was only able to run because Nugan took out a loan against himself? We may never know. Let's not forget to mention that Nugan transferred over two million dollars to the Liberal Party of Australia to oust then-Prime Minister Gough Whitlam, who was opposed to the Vietnam War, began decolonization efforts in Australia and abroad, and broadly told the United States to go fuck itself with regards to the Cold War. Whitlam was only kicked out due to then-Governor General John Kerr's efforts, who the CIA went on record as calling "our man". That last part isn't even speculation, it's all documented. Anyway, that's unrelated. Any CIA involvement in this story is just a baseless conspiracy theory. Allegedly.
Regardless, it does feel a bit like the game is playing itself. Names, locations, and years are all highlighted in unique colors so that you never really have to look too hard to find the next bit of progression. Even code names for people or locations are underlined with an explanation scribbled onto the same slips of paper, meaning that there's very little for the player to actually need to suss out. Location data and the card catalogs don't seem to update unless you specifically zoom in on an article while holding it, meaning that you can get stuck because you pinned a message to the corkboard and read it there rather than reading it while it was in your hand. This is kind of an inherent danger when it comes to puzzle games, because I guarantee that there are quite a few people out there who would say that, even with all of the help, the game is too hard. Still, it's certainly a shade too easy for me.
The ending is abrupt, but I'm honestly not sure what else it could be. You kind of get the feeling from the outset that you're not going to be going home after your research has wrapped up. There are so many details about the Nugan Hand Bank and the subsequent fallout that are left out of this — luckily, they're easy to find with a few simple searches online — but I would have liked to have gone through them in the game rather than through JSTOR articles. Again, this is less that I think the author failed at what they were trying to do, and more that they succeeded at doing something that doesn't wholly work for me. A Hand With Many Fingers is still a wonderful game that I had a great time with, and I'll always value something that's less than an hour long that gives me more material to wig out my relatives with at family dinners.
The Americans who were indicted or convicted due to their participation in the Iran-Contra affair were ultimately pardoned by George H.W. Bush in January of 1993, two days before Bill Clinton took office.
A Hand With Many Fingers excels at a difficult task, which is establishing a strong tone and sticking with it for the entire runtime. There's the little paranoia that digs at you from the beginning, dog-eared by a sense of intrigue — ooh, uncovering a CIA conspiracy, what fun! — that gradually starts to erode at you as the mystery gets harder to keep track of and sudden phone calls provide nothing but dead air on the other end. Fluorescent lights crack, pop, and flicker as you walk through the long corridors of the basement archives, waiting for something to inevitably be waiting for you around a corner; the sounds of footsteps and clattering boxes draw you upstairs only to find that there's nothing there; lights across the street turn off when you look at them; cars park and peel away moments later, making it impossible to tell if they're staking you out. These are all little twists of the screw that compound the (intentional) frustration that'll start eroding from your ankles up as you flick back and forth between your real-world notes and the articles pinned to the corkboard. I know Michael Hand was in 'Nam in 1965, but the archives don't go back that far, and even if they did, Paul Helliwell's Washington accounts that should be in OS 267/4 are all missing, and the other boxes are all marked to be destroyed. These little facts pile up on you — Bernie Houghton was in both the Middle East and Africa with Ed Wilson, who was in Hong Kong back in '77 with Michael Hand, and Hand was in both Sydney and Southeast Asia with Frank Nugan — and none of it really adds up beyond the fact that all of these men are involved in a great and terrible gunrunning scheme between the CIA and the Contras. The broad strokes are there, the general gist of things is there, but it's the exact details that elude you beyond the game and into reality once you look up the Nugan Hand Bank and realize that all of this shit really happened.
Allegedly. I want to stress that this shit all actually happened allegedly. There's no proof that the CIA was involved in the criminal dealings of the Nugan Hand Bank. Nugan's suicide is only allegedly suspicious, given that the gun he shot himself with was wiped clean of fingerprints. William Colby's business card was found in Nugan's pocket when he died, and Colby was at one time the Director of the CIA, which raised some questions. Just some questions, though! Questions which were asked by people who, at the time, were incredibly shocked that the New South Wales investigatory commission ruled out American involvement without really even looking into it. This is the same New South Wales government body who are, as it is commonly known today, ridiculously corrupt and — allegedly! — propped up by the Alameddine crime family. Oh, and Ferdinand Marcos worked with the Nugan Hand Bank, too. Why would the president of the Philippines launder his gold buillion through an Australian bank that had $80 in liquid assets and was only able to run because Nugan took out a loan against himself? We may never know. Let's not forget to mention that Nugan transferred over two million dollars to the Liberal Party of Australia to oust then-Prime Minister Gough Whitlam, who was opposed to the Vietnam War, began decolonization efforts in Australia and abroad, and broadly told the United States to go fuck itself with regards to the Cold War. Whitlam was only kicked out due to then-Governor General John Kerr's efforts, who the CIA went on record as calling "our man". That last part isn't even speculation, it's all documented. Anyway, that's unrelated. Any CIA involvement in this story is just a baseless conspiracy theory. Allegedly.
Regardless, it does feel a bit like the game is playing itself. Names, locations, and years are all highlighted in unique colors so that you never really have to look too hard to find the next bit of progression. Even code names for people or locations are underlined with an explanation scribbled onto the same slips of paper, meaning that there's very little for the player to actually need to suss out. Location data and the card catalogs don't seem to update unless you specifically zoom in on an article while holding it, meaning that you can get stuck because you pinned a message to the corkboard and read it there rather than reading it while it was in your hand. This is kind of an inherent danger when it comes to puzzle games, because I guarantee that there are quite a few people out there who would say that, even with all of the help, the game is too hard. Still, it's certainly a shade too easy for me.
The ending is abrupt, but I'm honestly not sure what else it could be. You kind of get the feeling from the outset that you're not going to be going home after your research has wrapped up. There are so many details about the Nugan Hand Bank and the subsequent fallout that are left out of this — luckily, they're easy to find with a few simple searches online — but I would have liked to have gone through them in the game rather than through JSTOR articles. Again, this is less that I think the author failed at what they were trying to do, and more that they succeeded at doing something that doesn't wholly work for me. A Hand With Many Fingers is still a wonderful game that I had a great time with, and I'll always value something that's less than an hour long that gives me more material to wig out my relatives with at family dinners.
The Americans who were indicted or convicted due to their participation in the Iran-Contra affair were ultimately pardoned by George H.W. Bush in January of 1993, two days before Bill Clinton took office.
The tone is absolutely spot on but you can 100% just accidentally stumble into the ending after an hour like I did. The short runtime means you don't get the chance to feel that delving into the mystery feeling you get with other detective games like Obra Dinn or Her Story. Love the corkboard mechanic though, I just think the paths you take need to be curated a little tighter so the ending can be essentially locked off til later.
bom jogo de investigação. o processo de juntar nome com ano e local, depois buscar em uma gaveta o número do arquivo pra finalmente poder ir buscá-lo em uma sala é muito bom, realmente te faz sentir um investigador ligando os pontos. porém acho que seu grande pecado está em não terminar bem sua história. sim, é baseado em uma história real e nem tudo na vida tem um final definido, mas chega a ser anticlimático, do tipo de ficar se perguntando "eu realmente terminei a história?"
mas acho bom deixar claro, novamente, que não é um jogo ruim, longe disso. nessas duas horas que fiquei pra zerar, estava engajado com a história, só acredito que seu final é abrupto demais (pelo menos é possível ficar mais meia hora depois lendo as páginas da Wikipedia sobre todos os pontos do jogo)
mas acho bom deixar claro, novamente, que não é um jogo ruim, longe disso. nessas duas horas que fiquei pra zerar, estava engajado com a história, só acredito que seu final é abrupto demais (pelo menos é possível ficar mais meia hora depois lendo as páginas da Wikipedia sobre todos os pontos do jogo)
A fun investigation game about digging through the archives. I just wish there was more, it's not even two hours long.
Fantastic microgame that just completely nails the tone it's going for. Doesn't overstay its welcome, never feels cumbersome or overbearing. Scratches the same investigative itch you might find in games like Obra Dinn and Outer Wilds.
If you aren't paranoid before playing this game, you will be after playing.
If you aren't paranoid before playing this game, you will be after playing.
The corkboard investigation stuff is interesting and fun, but on a whole due to how short of it and the lack of ending, it feels more like proof of concept than a full game.