Last Call BBS – Test: Zachtronics handed me an old computer as a farewell

Atmospheric journey through time, in which one cracks strong head nuts on a quasi-authentic computer of the 90s.

Too bad, too bad, too bad!

When a review begins with these words, the game usually has potential but is far from exhausting it. In this case, however, the situation is quite different. Because Last Call BBS is an excellent game – but unfortunately also officially the last from Zachary Barth’s indie studio Zachtronics (SpaceChem, Eliza, Opus Magnum). Its developers have noticed that they can only create a very specific type of game and have now exhausted it. If you want to know more, Zach answered a couple of questions I had about this and the future of the team a few weeks ago.

So Last Call BBS is supposed to be the finale. And it’s also a flashback, because when you click on it, it doesn’t just load the game. Rather, one sees a start screen of the operating system, while the Z5 Powerlance, a fictitious computer from the equally fictitious manufacturer Sawayama, boots up. Initially, there is nothing on it apart from a solitaire, a digital notebook and a program called Netronics Connect, which you use to log into the Internet via a landline. You know: [KRATZ]-[SCHAAAB]-[KNISTER]-[RAUSCH]-[DRÖÖÖÖÖHN] and then you are “already in”.

Eight programs can be downloaded via the Netronics connection, each taking a few minutes. Because you’re using the data limit of the connection, you also have to wait a quarter of an hour before you can download the next game – which put a big grin on my face. You can start the first game as well as the existing Solitaire immediately, meaning the waiting time is not an annoying harassment. However, in conjunction with imitated hard drive noises and other little things, it ensures that operating the Powerlance feels fantastically authentic. It’s not about a simulation! It’s about the nice feeling of experiencing the technology of yesteryear.

If you play the eight games, entries in the notebook are gradually added, giving you an insight into the history of the former owner. After all, he or she made the programs available to you as cracked versions and also operated the network through which you can still access the downloads today. Supposedly it’s all about programs that you couldn’t get anywhere else, but it was illegal anyway.

So what are these programs that people are racking their brains about here? Because, of course, it’s Zachtronics-typical puzzle games in which you have to or may solve any problem in any way – at least in part. In fact, Last Call BBS is a delightfully varied mix of very different concepts, including the aforementioned Solitaire. Also includes a distant Tetris cousin and a minesweeper third cousin.

Last but not least, there is a television series in this parallel world called Steed Force, which revolves around towering mechs, which is why you build some of these mechs in a Powerlance program of the same name as if you were doing it using real model construction kits. So you first snap all the components out of the plastic frame, then put them together and you can even add airbrush colors and stickers to the model. True, this is not a real game in the strict sense…

… which applies all the more to the remaining programs, most of which require pleasantly complex tinkering. On the one hand there is ChipWizard, where you place transistors and capacitors in order to convert certain input signals into the required outputs. In 20th Century Food Court, on the other hand, you create automated production chains in order to produce various foods as cost-effectively as possible.

Finally, my favorite is the obscure X’BPGH: The Forbidden Path, in which you create constructs out of bone and flesh. To achieve this, cells are positioned and stimulated to divide in several steps before finally changing their composition to generate the desired material. There’s something eerily end-time about it, especially since there are strange characters everywhere and the instructions are given in a language I don’t know. In my opinion, this is the most unusual puzzle that has ever come from Zachtronics.

I really like the fact that you have to work out their game logic via trial and error and cleverly combine the information gained in this way. However, Zachtronics has overdone it a bit this time with its own development, which has already distinguished some of the previous titles. In ChipWizard, some descriptions of the required outputs are so imprecise that you can be wrong, despite a supposedly correct solution. And in 20th Century Food Court, I initially had such a hard time understanding how some of the machines worked that I lost interest in that one program pretty early on. Of course that will happen at some point, but a little more precise guidance would have been good.

I already know: In order to understand the rules of a civilization, you had to have a similar amount of patience if you only had a black copy. I’ve heard! For my taste, however, Last Call BBS overdoes the imitation of this phenomenon in some places. So be it. On the other hand, some of the programs start with the intros of the imaginary cracker groups that have cracked the copy protection, and you can put up with these small hurdles for that alone.

Last Call BBS – Test Conclusion

On their own, none of the eight games are among the studio’s best. At the same time, every puzzle makes the gray cells smoke at the high level that Zachtronics is used to, and in their entirety they are above all part of an atmospheric journey through time, because you operate a quasi-authentic, old-fashioned computer whose hard drive idles when loading and for a while needs to set up its Internet connection via a landline. So I switch between the different programs, read up on their history and just enjoy the time I spend on Last Call BBS – just as I enjoyed the time Zach Barth released some of the best games of their kind. Therefore: Thank you, Zachtronics! With Last Call BBS you managed to have a wonderful break.