People's lives are in your hands!
911 Operator is a Real-Time Strategy/Simulation Game developed by Polish studio Jutsu Games and published by PlayWay S. A.. It was funded
by a Kickstarter campaign on August 20th, 2016, and was then first released on PC through Steam in February 2017. It was later released to Xbox One, PlayStation 4 and Android devices later that year. A release for the Nintendo Switch followed in October 2018.
In this game the player takes the role of a 9-1-1 telephone operator who must take calls for emergencies and then dispatch firefighters, paramedics, and police officers to where they are needed. The game had two DLC Packs released. The first, Every Life Matters, added reinforcements to aid in assigned calls as well as events mode during free play style. The second DLC Pack Special Resources added new emergency vehicles and tools to use on calls.
A sequel, 112 Operator, was announced in September 2019, and was funded the following month. The sequel moves the focus to cities across Europe but also includes more content such as bigger city maps with 3D renders and the progression of seasons with changing weather that changes the kind of emergencies that happen. The game includes all the same features as the first including the ability to play in any major city in the world.
This game contains examples of:
- Action-Based Mission: While gunfights are rare in the base game, with them only breaking out once a day on average, The Last Duty puts a lot more emphasis on combat, with you frequently being asked to kill hordes of infected. This also means that you're highly encouraged to call for military backup, as your cops aren't very useful for this purpose.
- Apocalypse Anarchy: In The Last Duty, your area eventually falls into chaos as people start looting stores and fighting over supplies. That said, your goal is to avert this, as you're still supposed to prevent crimes in addition to fighting the infected, and public order replaces your reputation.
- Bolivian Army Ending: The Last Duty ends this way once the last facility of a given type falls. The Operator looks away from his computer (revealing that he was holed up there), and gunfire is heard while somebody screams about the base being overrun as the infected attempt to break through the emergency exit. Averted in Infection Free Zone, where the Operator returns as the protagonist, having presumably survived against all odds.
- Cat Up a Tree: You can get calls about this "emergency" alongside a few more false positives for each emergency service (i.e. someone suffering from indigestion believing it's something way worse and that they need a medic) to provide contrast with the genuinely serious reports. Of course, actually responding is very much a mistake, especially if the fire crew then becomes unavailable for an actual fire. 112 Operator introduces a Morton's Fork aspect to this "emergency", as ignoring this event may or may not lead to the owner seriously injuring themself in an attempt to rescue the cat, which will spawn a call for an ambulance and thus tie up a medical unit that might otherwise be needed for another medical emergency.
- Clean Pretty Reliable: Averted. You can give callers instructions on how to do CPR, but it's only meant to keep a person they have found alive until the medics you called arrive on the scene and help the unconscious person.
- Closest Thing We Got: Your subordinates can be pushed into doing things they're not specialized for, such as having cops render first aid or medics do technical work. However, this will go incredibly slowly, and any attempt at firefighting will usually end with them suffering severe injury.
- Color-Coded for Your Convenience: The situations that demand a police response are illustrated on the map with blue icons, fires in red, and medical situations are in white. Sometimes, though, a situation of one type will need back-up from one or both of other services: i.e. more dangerous police situations benefit from an ambulance being on scene to treat any wounded, while the severe car crashes require firefighters to clear the pile-up and avoid any fuel ignition, ambulances to deliver the wounded to hospitals, and police to deal with the paperwork.
- Cop Killer: Some criminals have the potential to become this if you don't send enough police or don't act when they attack on duty officers.
- Cosy Catastrophe: The Last Duty takes place during a Zombie Apocalypse. However, various crimes and emails make it clear that people still go to work during the first days of it, even as they come close to being torn apart by the infected. This gets averted later on, however, as your local area falls into chaos, and you're cut off from buying anything before being ultimately overrun.
- Creator Provincialism: Considering the globe-spanning nature of this game, this is practically unavoidable. For instance, the player may receive minor police call-outs on "drinking in public", even in, say, Munich.
- Crippling Overspecialization: Soldiers are absolute beasts in combat, as they all come with rifles and armor, their vehicles grant them a high protection from gunfire, and they all have extremely high shooting skills. However, other than that, they can only perform search and technical work.
- Darkest Hour: In The Last Duty, it comes on days 11-13, as you become unable to hire people (as nobody is willing to work anymore, and even if they are, the infected will get to them anyway), call for backup, or buy equipment and vehicles (as you're cut off from other cities). Then your manager reveals that he was bitten, and says goodbye, with your objective shifting to simply surviving. The infected eventually manage to overrun the dispatch center, but the operator escapes.
- Dialogue Tree: You respond to the calls by picking options in this manner, which then lead to further voiced responses from the callers.
- Fame Gate: In the Career mode, you are only able to move on from the town you picked as your starting point to larger ones, and the correspondingly greater work load and more difficult situations, once your reputation grows high enough for the transfer to become approved.
- Foregone Conclusion: Even without the Stealth Sequel, the very name of 112 Operator - The Last Duty' implies things will always go south.
- Gameplay and Story Integration: In The Last Duty, the manager of your emergency management center eventually emails you about the chaos in your area, and ends it by telling you that it's no longer about reputation, but maintaining the public order. Appropriately, the game renames "Reputation" to "Public Order".
- Genre Shift: While the base game is a grounded emergency services simulator, The Last Duty takes a leap towards action and Survival Horror due to taking place in the middle of a Zombie Apocalypse.
- Going Down with the Ship: Not literally but in spirit. The Operator in The Last Duty stays at their dispatch post until it, too, is besieged by the infected. He returns as Mission Control for a group of survivors in the sequel.
- Heroic Sacrifice: The Operator in The Last Duty. As the situation escalates and his cohorts (the normally crowded dispatch center is filled with only dreadful silence in the ending)/emergency workers perish, the Operator still shows up to their shift, forced to make a hasty departure as the infected break through. Infection Free Zone, the sequel, shows that he's immune, so only the infected could kill him.
- The Immune: Infection Free Zone, the sequel to The Last Duty shows that the Operator was one of the people luckily immune to the infection.
- Instant Death Bullet: Averted. Some situations may end with the people getting shot on the scene, whether by the police you dispatch or suspects, but if such confrontations are to be expected, an ambulance can accompany it to prevent any deaths.
- Interrupted Suicide: In 112 Operator one caller attempts to commit suicide under the pretense of reporting a body, yet it can be stopped with the right dialogue options.
- Just Before the End: The first days of The Last Duty starts out rather peacefully, as the Zombie Apocalypse isn't yet in full swing, and you just read the occasional report of people with a weird sickness.
- This is even more pronounced in Freeplay with the DLC enabled, as it only starts once you unlock all the districts, and even then it still takes several duties for it to trigger.
- Last Stand: The Last Duty is a prolonged variant, as you try to hold the city until the very end.
- Man on Fire: One of these shows up in a warehouse fire-specific call, to the abject horror of the witnessing caller. You have to supply the correct information on how to help and get emergency services there on time or they'll die horribly.
- Menu Time Lockout: Zig-zagged. The time doesn't stop when you are on the phone with a caller or managing crew members. All the units you sent out will continue to be on their way, while the timer on the situations you didn't yet address will continue to tick down. However, you are allowed to put the game on pause and make some adjustments to response unit routes and such. You can even just pause the game.
- Mistaken for Prank Call: One of the situations is a phone call from someone ordering pizza. The caller had actually been kidnapped, with the person forced to speak in code in order to avoid spooking their captor. Failing to realize this and hanging up results in them getting killed. 112 Operator has a similar situation with a caller pretending to speak to her mother; ignoring this one turns out even worse for you, since a child is involved.
- No Communities Were Harmed: Averted. In the Freeplay mode, the player is explicitly asked to pick a real-world city or town. In fact, it can be any settlement on Earth, as the game will then download its real-world location data.
- No FEMA Response: Averted in The Last Duty as you are the response, and you can still call for reinforcements, with the military occasionally providing squads in numerous vehicles.
- Not Using the "Z" Word: The vampire-like zombies of The Last Duty are always called the infected, never zombies. They're vampiric, ravenous, yet photosensitive.
- Our Zombies Are Different: The infected of The Last Duty are of the Technically-Living Zombie type. They are strong enough to overwhelm well-equipped police officers in slightly superior numbers, can scale walls or just outright destroy them. Fortunately, if bullets won't stop them, sunlight will.
- Phone-Trace Race: the best way to stop the terrorist bombings in Washington: if you let the terrorist rant at length about his demands you can stall him long enough for the system to figure out his location and dispatch police units.
- Police Are Useless: While the cops do their job adequately in the normal game, The Last Duty has a donwplayed example in that your cops are capable of fighting the infected, but they do so far worse than the military, especially when it comes to hordes.
- Purposefully Overpowered: The soldiers are effectively unstoppable in combat due to having the best combat equipment available, as well as a very high protection chance from their vehicles. This all comes at the cost of them being incapable of doing anything other than search and technical work, and The Last Duty balanced large hordes with them in mind. Doesn't help that you only have a limited amount of them at your disposal.
- RPG Elements: All of the first responders you manage come with stats like first aid or driving skills, which get improved as they gain experience.
- Skewed Priorities: The Last Duty still has the same incidents pop up as in the normal campaign, meaning that you can be asked to deal with a shoplifter while there's a horde wandering around a block away.
- Slave to PR: Reputation determines your career and your funding. Somewhat Justified as you are a literal public servant funded by tax dollars.
- Suicidal Overconfidence: Quite a few criminals will attempt to pick a fight with the officers arriving on the scene, especially if they are in a state of intoxication. Needless to say, that rarely goes well for them.
- Sometimes, you'll get reports of criminals attacking officers already on duty. As long as you manage to send out a police response unit in time, this will also be severely punished.
- Stealth Sequel: 112 Operator - The Last Duty itself is non-canonical to its base game, and serves as the prequel to Jutsu Games' future game Infection Free Zone.
- Talking Down the Suicidal: One scenario in 112 Operator has a man calling and saying that his whole life has become a joke and is warning you that he is suicidal. The main goal of the mission is to talk him out of it or send someone in time to stop it.
- Timed Mission: You get a certain amount of time to resolve each report before they get timed out, which results in a hit to your reputation.
- Worst Aid: You can be the cause of it if you give the caller the wrong information.
- Would Hurt a Child: 112 Operator has a call that can result in the Death of a Child if handled poorly.
- Zombie Apocalypse: 112 Operator - The Last Duty is a DLC expansion where you're the poor schmuck that has to try to delay one through emergency response.
