Orwell: Keeping an Eye On You Review by Atarun

Description

Orwell is a visual novel that puts you in the shoes of a Big Brother employee: you are tasked with spying on people and uploading to the system anything suspicious. Unlike most visual novels, you are not presented here with walls of text followed by lists of choices. Rather, your interaction with the game and its unfolding story goes solely through the gimmick of uploading the data chunks you find (or not). By picking among conflicting data chunks or by choosing not to upload some sensitive information, you impact the story in small and big ways.

Pros

+ Fresh interaction gimmick that goes very well with the theme
+ Credible writing with many characters each having their own style of speech
+ Interesting choices going WAY beyond the good/bad dichotomy
+ Decent art style
+ Fair amount of consequences to choices made, though the game remains linear

Cons

- Notification system takes some getting used to
- Because all chats and phone calls are delivered sloooooowly (and I found no way to speed them up), replaying the game to get the achievements or test other choices is a bit of a chore
- Political messages are (very) thinly veiled and might annoy (or even anger?) some players

Verdict

Do you hate it when someone tries to convey a political message artistically and ends up as subtle as a bull in a china shop? If so, stay away from this game. You're going to hate it.

Still here? OK, here's an idea: put yourself in the shoes of an orwellian enforcer and imagine the consequences of government trampling all over freedom, privacy and presumption of innocence.

Interested? Then try Orwell. Go in expecting a fresh visual novel and a politically charged (to the point of being heavy-handed at times) thought experiment. There is much to like.