A Hand With Many Fingers: Cataloging the Past

Time to Beat: 71 Minutes

In 2020, Colesita released their third game on Steam, A Hand With Many Fingers. Looking at their two other games on Steam, and their collection on Itch.io, their games share an anti-capitalist, pro-communist theme.

A Hand With Many Fingers opens with text. This game is based on real events, but uses fake documents to tell the story. It recommends the player take their notes on paper, which I did.

The player controls an unnamed agent looking through some CIA archives in a nondescript office. Initially the player only has access to three rooms, though the building contains a number of locked doors. A large central room contains a number of sizable card catalogs marked with regions on the top, and years on the drawers on the side. Each drawer is for a single year, from 1971 through 1980.

Entering into their office, the player sees a table, a map, and a cork board (along with non-interactive elements like a phone and a window).A Hand With Many Fingers has no tutorial, but a sign on the wall in the office, by the American Archival Association tells the player how to conduct research.

One, pick a topic. Record (on a piece of paper in real life) the location, year, and name of a person, place, or event. Walk to the card catalog and use the location, date, and name to locate relevant cards. Again, write on a real piece of paper, the number on the card, like OS 590/7. Walk down the stairs into the third room, the archive. This room is aisles of shelves with uniform boxes. Each is cataloged so it is easy to locate the box you want. Take the box back to the office and place it on the table. The previous box will be shoved to the floor. Empty the box of the one to five clippings placed inside. These include photos, emails, business cards, documents, or newspaper clippings. They must be placed on one of the two boards before another box can be opened.

On all pieces of paper, relevant names are highlighted in RED, dates in BLUE, and locations in YELLOW.

Once on the board, the player can connect the paper with red strings and blue and red pins. Pins and strings don't activate anything. They are only for the player's benefit. Placing papers on the board is annoying. Objects can't touch, and must have a centimeter of space between them. You can't even connect ripped pages! Reading the board is difficult, until you realize there is a zoom button. The game isn't polite enough to inform you of the zoom button.

So I wander back and forth from the office to the catalog to the archival room, pulling boxes. I don't believe A Hand With Many Fingers would stop the player from pulling random boxes. The building is completely empty, but it contains a number of atmospheric noises. There is the large clunk of your feet hitting the floor. The shuffle as you remove documents. The soft hiss as you pick up a box and the soft thump as you put it down. The metallic hum of the air conditioning in the archive. The loud click as you pin something to the board, and a soft hiss as you draw a string between two pieces of data. There's a radio playing classical music you can turn on and off. And a TV displaying Ronald Reagan's face.

It's already a creepy atmosphere. The general silence, combined with the complete emptiness, and the sudden or pervasive ambient sounds lends A Hand With Many Fingers a tense atmosphere. The many locked doors that look like they could be used eventually could be hiding something. This tension is amplified by a few events. The ringing of a telephone, that when you answer, returns only a dial tone. A loud sound that I'm certain was someone upstairs. And a car driving through the wall of your office, crashing into your window. But these are deceptions by the developer. There is no threat to the player. After the crash, the car idles in a pile of rubble. No one attacks the player. You never see another soul.

Before this all happens the player sees the initial box on the desk; 552/12. It contains a torn photo of three people, and a newspaper clipping from 1980, about how a banker, Francis John Nugan, was found dead in Sydney. The clipping also includes a headline about socialist forces in Nicaragua. These clues provide the jumping off point for the investigation.

I opened twenty-one boxes to complete A Hand With Many Fingers.

My search went as follows:

Sydney, 1980, F. Nugan – 2 boxes

Washington, 1979, W. Colby – 1 box

Washington, 1979, F. Nugan – no boxes

Sydney, 1980, M. Hand – 2 boxes

Sydney, 1980, Bernie Houghton – 1 box

Geneva, 1978-1980, B. Houghton – no boxes

Geneva, 1978, E. Wilson – 2 boxes

Washington, 1975, E. Wilson – 1 box

Saudi, 1980, B. Houghton – no boxes

Middle East, 1978-1979, B. Houghton – 2 boxes

Angola, 1975, M. Hand/ W. Colby – 2 boxes

Chiang Mai, 1979, Hand/Colby – no boxes

Chiang Mai, 1977, Hand – 1 box

Discovered three relevant boxes through secrets

Chiang Mai, 1975, P. Helliwell – no boxes

Caymen, 1975, P. Helliwell – 1 box

Annex B

Victory!

When I write above that there were no boxes, or one box, or two, what I mean is I didn't count boxes I had already opened. At least five times the search in the catalog directed me to a box I had already searched. As I opened boxes, I placed stuff on the board, but it wasn't necessary to connect them, or even read them, to know where to look next. It was all buzzwords, highlighted for the player.

I managed only a limited understanding of the story. What the player uncovers is a government conspiracy to use ex-military personal, turned bankers, to facilitate arm transfers to aid coups undertaken by the CIA. Michael Hand, and his associates conducted their espionage and weapon shipments through the Nugan Hand Bank, from which the game gets its name. A Hand (Michael Hand) and his many fingers (associates, other banks). As for the details, of who did what where, or even who was involved, or any facts about their life, I have no clue. Understanding the story wasn't necessary to play A Hand With Many Fingers. The player doesn't have to connect any objects to win. The only requirement for victory is placing a specific piece of paper on the board. Doing so results in immediate victory. Zero understanding is required. After winning, the player can continue to explore.

I reviewed the historical insinuations on Wikipedia, and while the article of Michael Jon Hand doesn't explicitly mention gun running, it does hint at shady behavior helped by powerful people. I feel I could learn more about the supposed events by using the internet than playing this game.

My final complaint on A Hand With Many Fingers is that I felt dizzy walking around and looking for the correct box to pick up. The Steam page does contain a warning about this, but I didn't see it at the time. I wonder why this game causes a feeling of motion sickness, while other games don't.

In conclusion,

A Hand With Many Fingers is a mystery game based on true life events, the use of ex-military bankers to fund covert operations by the CIA. The developer implies that the operations used drugs, spies, money laundering, and arms trafficking. While a quick check online supports the story, the game itself is a failure. It doesn't teach the player anything. It can be completed on autopilot, as the player only has to learn Names, Dates, and Locations, without connective tissue. The atmosphere is a deceptive attempt to build tension in an otherwise tedious experience.  It's disappointing that a desire to teach about an often ignored aspect of United States history is hindered by a dull game.