At the end of 2016 it was released Orwell: Keeping an Eye on You – debut project of an independent German developer Osmotic Studios. Nice graphics, 92% positive reviews and a low price prompted me to purchase a licensed copy of it. Before the purchase itself, I decided to find out what the audience of one of my favorite sites thought about this game, but, surprisingly, I did not find any materials regarding this game. And so, after 6 hours spent playing this game, I decided to correct this injustice by writing a short review, which I present to your attention.
Is the main component of the game. In the story, the government of a fictional democratic country, the Nation, created a special program called Orwell – a computer algorithm capable of finding any information about any person on the Internet. We act as one of the first “interrogators”, people not from the Nation who have just joined the project. Only “interrogators” have access to the information found by Orwell, and only they decide which of them to transfer to the “curator” – an employee of the Nation’s security services. Based on the data received from us, the “curator” will make appropriate decisions regarding a particular suspect. All information is divided into 4 types: unimportant – information about favorite food, color, clothes, etc.n., important – as the name suggests, conflicting – appears when two pieces of data contain conflicting information, and false information. Important and conflicting information are necessary to advance the story, while the first and last types of information are of no value.
Decide what information the “curator” will receive, weed out unnecessary and false information, decide the fate of innocent and not so innocent people…. Sounds good, doesn’t it?? However, almost all information found must be transferred to the “curator”, regardless of whether you want it or not. And if you accidentally conveyed false or unimportant information to him, he will get angry, persistently ask you to take your work seriously, in general, he will do everything to shame you, since he is not capable of much. The only thing he can do is give a comment on almost every, EVERY piece of information uploaded. Constantly popping up messages that need to be closed do not cause much discomfort in the first hour of the game, but by the end they really get on your nerves. Perhaps this was done to stir up interest in the story, but in reality it only gets in the way and irritates.
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As for the plot as such, it is divided into five episodes and is based on the investigation of an event that happened on our first day of work in the project. The story is fascinating, has a couple of unexpected twists and several endings, but, unfortunately, is slightly predictable and linear. Throughout the entire gameplay, we will only be allowed to influence people’s destinies a few times, and at the end of the fifth episode we will be able to choose the ending. However, the story is well told and interesting to follow. It is also worth noting non-player characters, whose identities are gradually revealed through articles on the Internet and correspondence on social networks, as well as the correspondence themselves. Unlike many games, this isn’t just messages appearing methodically on the screen. These are correspondences on social networks. Long messages take longer to print, short messages print faster. It happens that both people sent messages at the same time or someone writes one big message while the second one writes a bunch of small ones, in short, situations familiar to everyone who has an account on VKontakte, Facebook*, etc.n. Thanks to this, as well as informal and obscene language, it seems that you are really watching a dialogue between two people who have their own unique characters, fears and desires. The characters, an interesting story and the presentation of this story itself compensate for all the shortcomings described above and in terms of plot the game leaves a positive impression.
The game screen is divided into two parts: the suspect’s dossier and information search tools. There are three tabs available to us in the tools: sites, wiretapping and hacking. Each of these tabs contains, respectively, articles and blogs, correspondence and telephone conversations and devices that can be accessed remotely.
It all looks like this
The second tab has already been discussed above. Another way to get information is through articles and blogs. They are well written and moderately long, but, to be honest, after the 15th article you read, you just start skimming through them, looking for the information you need. The third type of information source is computers and phones that can be accessed remotely. Unfortunately, it is not as interesting as the first two – there are 3 or 4 folders on the computer, containing from one to 5 files. The information in these files is important and sometimes even plays a key role, but the devices themselves are perceived as something that was added at the last moment, without being fully thought through.
Actually, the gameplay is as follows: Orwell finds important information, in his opinion, and highlights it in blue, and if two pieces of data conflict with each other, then in yellow. By clicking on a fragment, we drag it onto the dossier, thereby loading it into the Orwell system, and… I wish I could say something more, but that’s basically it. There is no need to painstakingly search for information – Orwell will highlight the necessary data. There is no need to re-visit all sites and blogs during a plot twist: if something new appears in them, Orwell will helpfully mark them with a red asterisk. There are no mini-games for hacking devices, so beloved by many studios – Orwell does everything for you. And on the one hand, this approach to gameplay is good – it helps you focus on the plot, and follow the story until the very end without distractions. In addition, for games of this type, the gameplay is almost always an addition to an interesting story: pleasant, simple and unobtrusive. But still, here you want something more than just methodically clicking the mouse on the highlighted words. However, again, the gameplay is not the main thing here, and its simplicity and monotony do not greatly spoil the assessment of the entire game.
Bottom line: Overall the game leaves a positive impression. Nice graphics, interesting plot and low price – its 3 main advantages. If you like games like Do Not Feed The Monkeys or The Return of the Obra Dinn and you need something to do for 6 hours, I recommend checking it out.
* The activities of the parent organization “Meta” are recognized as extremist and prohibited on the territory of the Russian Federation