911 Operator: A Game About Being A... 911 Operator
Answer calls, dispatch police
I've said before that I want more games that place you into the interesting shoes of people with interesting jobs, just as Papers, Please dropped you into the role of a customs officer. 911 Operator intrigues, then; it's a game where you play the person on the end of the phone when you ring the emergency services. From crimes in progress, to terrible injuries, to cats being stuck up in trees, you have to say the right things on the phone, dispatch the right services in time, and you can play on a street map of any real city in the world.
The game's been on Kickstarter for long enough to already reach double its small goal, and there's a video below.
Here's the successful pitch video:
I have no idea if there's a time pressure on your decisions, but if there is the game might prove too stressful to handle. People on the phone asking me how to properly dress the wound from the leg they just chopped off is the stuff of nightmares, but that's one of the situations that can happen in the game's "Duty" mode. The other half of the game is a "management" mode in which you can "recruit additional team members, buy vehicles and equipment and watch an after action report, where you can find out what happened to your callers."
The game uses OpenStreetMap to let you pull in any city you can think to type into the box. The video above shows examples from New York and other major cities, but I quite like the idea of taking charge of the emergency services in my island village. I imagine that the game won't change according to location given its budget and size, but I dream of an expansion pack featuring emergency calls about those three cows being out on the road again.
There are ten days remaining on the game's Kickstarter and $9 will net you a copy of the game on its project November 2016 release.