In this game there is really no winning answer. There is only what you think is morally correct and what you prioritise. Its a fantastic game that demands your full attention and demands you make choices you don't want to make. Think of this as Papers please crossed with something like Project Highrise. This game will test you but its well worth playing. If you would like more info on the game feel free to message me with questions since I can't edit this review after this.
Highly Recommended but its not going to be for everyone and its going to be hard.
As a person that lived a small part of my life under communism, this game sure hits close to home. I actually know that while most things present here are hyperbolized, at its base, many of these kind of things likely happened. This is not really a game that you play to win, this more of a game that you play to experience a dark side of humanity. Enjoy!
Rating: 1984: The Game.
*Editors' Pick*
http://pixelloot.com
3.5 stars. That's pretty good, actually.
You play as a government employee whose job entails keeping an eye on the tenants of the building he's in charge of. The setting is a dystopian one and the game looks accordingly bleak, with characters being black shapes and everything looking a bit dark and grey. Graphics are somewhat simplistic, but also appealing in a way.
Game mechanics are fairly simple: You earn money by installing cameras and microphones in the apartments and selling certain information to your employer - or not. Other means of acquiring wealth include blackmail and theft. Whatever you do, don't get caught; wait for tenants to leave, sneak into their places, ruin their lives - or don't. Some things are a bit annoying, like the fact that you have to hurry up to not get caught in your shenanigans, or that some things will lead to other, terrible things, which you may not have any way of telling.
Overall Beholder has a vague Papers, Please vibe to it, and like in that game, you can either do your job and not care or do your best to help the people around you, all while taking care of your family and trying to keep them alive. I enjoyed this game a lot, but I have to say it's a bit of a pain to reach the "best" ending since there are very specific requirements for that. There are several choices to make and various different endings to reach, however, so playing it again is worth it (and recommended, since a playthrough can be short or very short depending on your decisions). You will also know better what to do if you try again.
When I find myself force quitting (alt+F4) to restart the game because it is way faster than watching my character getting killed painfully slowly and having to wait (on a core i5 with 16 GB RAM and a 500GB SSD) for the ending animation to load that I cannot skip and then waiting again for the second part to load and play it is usually not a good sign. When a wrong dialog choice can lead to being killed by any character this is not funny.
So this game is about struggling with the interface, you'll find yourself zooming out to try to see the whole scene and zooming in to be able to see and click on the various game element. The only way to have a chance in this game is by running around which is double clicking where to go, but depending on the zoom level some click do not register and some register at the wrong place.
My kid is dying and I have 4 hours to give the medicine that I have in my inventory to my wife that I can see in her room but it is impossible to interact with her while she's in her room and she did not leave until time and kid were expired.
At times you have to knock at doors to be able to talk to tenants but the wrong tenant will come to the door and each time he/she will come so slow that you have enough time to run to the basement pass a couple phone calls and run to the street to buy some stuff from the black market vendor then run to the pot to collect blackmail money before the tenant gets to its door.
Localized translation is approximate at places and I found no option to switch to english.
Also this game drains my laptop battery about 3-4x times faster than usual for no apparent reason.
I did put 3 stars because you can actually endure the game and finish it, though I recommend buying something else, like papers please which has a similar atmosphere but is a good game.
So this a weird one. This game has the makings of a cool (albeit depressing) game, however i think it's Papers Please inspiration weighs on it too much. It feels like the creators wanted to recreate the Papers Please game in a different setting and then made a game around it instead of starting off with an idea for a game and building a theme around that - and that's a pity, because the "game" part of the game is what's worst about it.
The setting, the premise, the theme, the graphics - those things are executed extremely well and work together perfectly to recreate the stuffy, paranoid and hostile reality of living in a totalitarian state. And honestly - this alone makes the game worth buying if it's on sale. The idea that you have to figure out ways to spy on your tenants makes for a good base mechanic for a game and is perfectly in tune with the game theme. Unfortunately, the game quickly loses focus of what it's primary mechanic is (or should be i guess?) and instead turns into... i dunno. A point & click adventure with mingames? A visual novel with game bits? Hard to tell. This is a pity, because adventure games and visual novels need a strong story to carry them and this game doesn't get there. It's ok-ish in that regard, but that's not enough.
All in all, i feel like the game could do with more focus. It's a bit too all over the place, and that's a pity - because there is really a lot of solid work put into it.
Final verdict: buy it, if you like concept games, you find the setting interesting or if it's on sale.
