policesquadquest/cases/case-10-plot-device/game.json
type-two e95360a1b2 Case Ten: The P.L.O.T. Device (2025) — Drebin Jr, and the owl
Act III, cold-palette EGA. Six rooms, 100 points, verified end-to-end
headlessly at 100/100 with the win firing.

The homage John asked for is a register, not a costume. Nielsen played Drebin Sr
oblivious — the joke was he never noticed. Neeson plays Jr sincere: he notices
everything and means all of it, so his text is written straight and often
genuinely moving, and the comedy is what it turns out to be about. He gives a
Taken speech about his particular set of skills, chief among them paperwork. He
takes four armed robbers in eleven seconds dressed as a schoolgirl with his back
to the actual crime. Cane gets the same sincerity back at him from the wrong
face.

The three-era payoff pays off: the owl sprite is generated monochrome and placed
in a full-colour room, so Frank Drebin Sr is visibly lit by a different decade
than everything around him. The palette rule from DESIGN §2 doing the emotional
work at the climax.

Planned cases 10 and 11 merged into one folder — same film, same cast, no
duplicated sprite set, and the owl payoff lands in the same case as its setup.

Third authoring trap documented: sets_flag fires on use, never on take (points
does both). A takeable item silently failed to set its flag and the gate it fed
never opened; gate on `needs`, which checks inventory, instead.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
2026-07-25 22:39:00 +10:00

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JSON

{
"name": "Police Squad Quest — Case Ten: The P.L.O.T. Device",
"start_room": 0,
"max_score": 100,
"intro_text": "My father was a police officer. His father was a police officer. I have a very particular set of skills — skills I have acquired over a very long career, skills that make me a nightmare for people like you. Chief among them is paperwork. My name is Frank Drebin Jr., Police Squad, and today I am dressed as a schoolgirl for reasons that will become clear to absolutely no one. Type 'help'.",
"death_text": "† OFFICER DOWN. Somewhere, an owl is disappointed. The day restarts. †",
"verbs": [
{ "name": "use", "words": ["frisk", "search", "inspect", "cuff", "arrest", "wear", "radio", "halt", "hack", "scan", "deploy", "punch"] },
{ "name": "look", "words": ["investigate", "observe", "detect"] },
{ "name": "talk", "words": ["interrogate", "question", "brief"] }
],
"flags": {
"disguised": false,
"knows_theft": false,
"assigned": false,
"knows_murder": false,
"beth_helping": false,
"has_matchbook": false,
"knows_logo": false,
"decommissioned": false,
"knows_plan": false,
"shielded": false
}
}