911 Operator Preview

911 Operator is not a game purely based around taking the role of a phone call operator, after all, it would be somewhat tedious to be able to do nothing other than respond to phone calls throughout the game. Whilst answering the phone to respond to various emergency calls is part of the game, it is certainly not the only thing you can do. Much to my delight the game allows you to effectively manage the equipment of various emergency operators; including police officers, firemen and paramedics, as well as assigning them to certain vehicles of your choice.

At first, this was all lost on me, I had no idea what I should equip to who and no idea what everyone should be using! Of course, it didn’t take long for me to start figuring it out; afterall, I don’t think a fireman needs an assault rifle and I doubt a policeman would find much use in a fireman’s axe and prybar.

The rest of the game is focused around the management of your emergency services, directing paramedics, firemen and police officers to certain events around the map. Occasionally, the phone will ring, requiring you to respond carefully to the person on the other end. You must find out what is happening, what you need to send and where they are; more than once I have stupidly finished the phone call without actually asking where they were.

As the game progresses, so does the difficulty, with more and more scenarios appearing on screen and more and more problems for you to have to deal with and before long you find yourself clicking frantically as you try and order the various vehicles to go where you wish. Overall, it is a fantastic early access game that appears to be very much true to the name, with some features still missing; such as multiple voice actors but the core game is still there in its entirety.

Of course, every game has its faults and this one is no saint. Most of the menus are confusing and as mentioned earlier I did struggle a fair bit with the inventory management, how much money I had to spend on new units and so forth. My other issue was with the fact that there were no notifications, as far as I could see, when the various teams finished their assignments! I had no idea which crews were free and which ones weren’t! Sometimes I would accidently pull a police car away from an in progress assignment!

Truth be told there isn’t much to talk about with this game in its current state other than the mentioned above, the tutorial is effective but simplistic at best and the loadout of the UI and display is very user friendly, it's not hard to see where your bases are and with the maps it's not hard for you to manage your crews.

Devs, if you are reading this, please make all notifications more obvious and help the user understand how to use the shop more effectively!

For simulation and management lovers, this is the game for you!