Tech Support: Error Unknown
Top Critic Average
Critics Recommend
Tech Support: Error Unknown Trailers
Tech Support: Error Unknown - Release Date Trailer
Tech Support: Error Unknown - Announcement Trailer
Critic Reviews for Tech Support: Error Unknown
Despite its flaws, there is some merit to Tech Support: Error Unknown. It does capture the feeling of working in a fast paced support environment.
Tech Support: Error Unknown is a short little game, quick to play, easy to digest, and honestly, compelling enough to make me want to find out what happens next.
Tech Support: Error Unknown brings its own ideas to life in great detail, but it's missing the emotional core of Papers, Please.
The difficulty curve is spot-on but storytelling pacing could be better and more emotional. With core game play that becomes as monotonous as you'd expect, the side-stories needed higher stakes for more emotional investment.
A lovely experiment in its own right, Tech Support: Error Unknown is not for the faint of heart. Even at the lowest difficulty, it only comes into its own with an attentive player capable of reading between the lines. Though technical problems exist, they don't get in the way too much. Recommended for those who'd like to try out something new and different, and don't have a problem with sticking with the game until it really clicks.
Some niggling problems, and a feeling of repetition keep it from being a fantastic game, but it's still a great one.
Tech Support: Error Unknown would have been more impressive if it had a clear message, perhaps about worker exploitation, or corporate overreach, or even the damage hacker activists can cause. Sadly, this aspect is either so subtle as to be undetectable, or missing entirely. What this leaves behind is an entirely too accurate simulation of the daily grind of a tech support technician, where the main interest lies in trying to find the end of each story branch, and fun is largely put on the back-burner.
There’s definitely a nice idea in playing as a tech support trapped behind deploying stock phrases, as some larger story unfolds about you, but Tech Support: Error Unknown just doesn’t deliver it.
