Orwell

So, this is me actually going through some games that I bought in the last Steam summer sale. Just in time for the Steam winter. This one is a bit out of character for me in some aspects, or at least I think so. Its a small text based indie adventure, but its about being a 'Big Brother' type figure within a totalitarian government, which is the hook that caught me.

The game as a whole is pretty basic and somewhat linear in its progression right up until the very final part of the game. However, I enjoyed that to be honest the game kind of built in its tutorial to the gameplay before it unleashed you onto the world so it was quite easy to really navigate and play the game. 

This thankfully made it easy to really to connect with the various characters in the game, or to be more appropriate to develop an emotional response to them whether it was to hate or love them. That in my opinion is a triumph given that the entirety of the game is conveyed through simple text and images and the accompanying musical track for the most part. There is like one video, but its all very blocky and simple so I wouldn't really count it as a strong emotive tool.

The core concept of the game is the main draw for me though. You get to play as a security agent with full access to peoples emails, phones, bank accounts and so much more and being able to explore that concept and really see how intrusive it can be was the best part of the game for me. I felt the very simplistic gameplay fit this concept quite well and making it really feel like you were simply behind your desk just snooping around and destroying the lives of other people.

Orwell is a well executed game. At its core it has a strong conceptual message it wants to convey and it does it quite well despite its graphical and technical limitations. However, this isn't a game I'd uniformly recommend. In order to purchase it you either have to really be into politcal and individual privacy themes or really into text adventures, otherwise the game will not really do it for you in my opinion. But if you do like the concept then you should also be excited to hear that the studio has already finished development of a second game within the Orwell universe that will also examine the same themes and concepts.