Orwell: Keeping an Eye On You

If you like getting an hour per monetary unit, then you definitely get that in Orwell. The campaign is as long as Titanfall 2, and it has a heck of a lot more gameplay to it than BATMAN the Telltale Series, both of which cost more and are written just as well.

Orwell is a fascinating game. Osmotic's title allows you to feel the impact of the stuff we leave behind in the Internet every day. It's a story about a balancing act between freedom and privacy. Orwell's engaging story will drag you in and inspire a cold shudder when you realize the consequences of our actions.

Orwell is a thought-provoking game about privacy, politics, and ethical dilemmas such as sacrificing a few in favor of the whole. With immersive visuals and a multi-layered story, it will instantly pull you in. This game offers high replayability and starts much-needed conversations in this age of technology.

With such a compelling tale and well-crafted characters, it's easy to look past the fact that gameplay solely consists of absorbing information and choosing to pass certain things on. Though there are no random puzzles to solve, the main puzzle for the player is clear: are you willing to let a government do this to its citizens? Where are the boundaries of freedom of speech and privacy in such an interconnected world? Is it more important to guarantee the safety of all by being paranoid, or to ensure that everyone has the right to be innocent until proven guilty beyond reasonable doubt? If asking difficult questions and finding a way to your own answers sounds like a good time, Orwell is the game for you.

Orwell is a thriller investigation game, but also an interactive way to face the consequences of a dystopian society.

A novel perspective on totalitarian surveillance. Orwell may not make you think, but it should keep you entertained.

Big Brother may be watching, but if I was him I would have switched off from boredom. [Issue#257, p.65]

Great game. It's insightful, interesting and draws you right in with a compelling story and unique presentation. If you're looking for something casual, intriguing and mysterious, you'll be satisfied. P.S. it really makes you feel like a creeper, conversations between characters seem very authentic and I felt like I shouldn't have read some of them.

Short game but pleasant overall that allows you to spend 5-6 hours in a very "light" way in terms of gameplay but committed in terms of "ethical" implications. The game looks like a normal "guided" detective game but then after the first few episodes its ethical and social implications emerge. I particularly enjoyed chapters 3-4. At times it may seem a bit too driven and even if there is a sense of "freedom" in the investigative choices, the ending remains quite scripted on 2-3 different choices. Overall recommended. Gameplay: 6/10 History: 8/10 Duration: 4-6h

Orwell es, sin duda, un videojuego muy interesante. El punto de partida es que nos contratan como investigadores en La Nación para resolver unos atentados que tienen lugar en nuestro primer día y para ello ponen a nuestra disposición el programa Orwell. Este lo que hace, básicamente, es acceder a las redes sociales, páginas webs, y otros elementos digitales para extraer información, hacer perfiles y agregarlos. Al hacer esto, vamos juntando las pistas de lo que está ocurriendo, y avanzamos una historia que se va desarrollando con cada día de juego ante nuestros ojos. Es un juego cortito, de hecho da la sensación de que se acaba cuando está llegando a su mejor momento, que con su peculiar estética consigue transmitir muy bien las sensaciones de que estamos observando una sociedad real desde un panóptico digital. Un apartado gráfico interesante, un apartado sonoro algo escueto pero que cumple en parte (aunque se nota que el presupuesto en este sentido era muy limitado) y un juego con algunos bugs pero ninguno demasiado grave, cierran más o menos un juego sin duda recomendable. Un 7. Si queréis un análisis más social y político: ****/orwell-vigilancia-en-la-sociedad-del-siglo-xxi/

An "Orwellian" game wherein the entirety is just clicking through layers upon layers of fictitious web browsers, sifting endlessly for something quite literally highlighted for you. I'd be more forgiving to it, if it actually had, y'know, using cameras and surveillance equipment to spy on/ listen in to people. Instead, that aspect is relegated to cutscenes. I suppose if one had the time, energy, and storage space on their computer, they COULD go through this game, though it plays like a classic TellTale Games story, just without any of the graphical intrigue or charm. It does have this semi-low poly look to it, and while the UI is very basic, it tends to be pleasing to look at.

Orwell is a "reading game" in which you are a government agent and spy to certain people in order to prevent their crimes. You play the game by using Orwell, a software that lets you visit websites, spy on conversations or inside the computers of the people. Checking this things, you'll find pieces of information related to your suspects, and dragging the text representing the information to the other side of the screen will insert the info into the characters sheet. Filling the sheets as much as possible should be your goal, and by doing that the game will progress. What's disappointing is the feeling of lack of choice that is present from the start to the end. You're guided in the game by an "helper", a guy that does not have direct access to Orwell. He will tell you what to do all the time, the pages to read will appear to you one by one and you'll have zero agency on what to read and what not. Until you submit the right information, no new data will appear, and when you will, only one or a few new pages/conversations will be available to read. The guy pop-up (that looks like a tutorial but stays until the end of the game) will appear almost everytime you submit some new info, most of the time just to make some useless and annoying comment. The only way to make impactful decisions goes against what is explained by the tutorial guy at the start: you're required to collect as much as true information as possible about the suspects, but sometimes the right choice in order to influence the game is to hide them, that's counterintuitive. It's somewhat interesting to understand what happened and who's really the bad one (probably the only thing that made me finish the game), but if I decide to play a game about spying on people, it's really annoying that since the first chapter the game revolves around the concept that spying on people is bad and that my (limited) choice is about being a good Orwell agent or sabotage it. So it feels a bit forced and too obvious. Special mention to the italian translation: while it's said to be amateurish and not official, it is so so so bad that I wonder how can that come as default. Many words are just typed wrongly (and they become different words), entire phrases don't make sense, one page is in Finnish (at least I guess that was Finnish) and often the characters nicknames are translated differently depending on the page. Horrible. Is there also some good to this game? Well, a bit: the interface is neat and while limited, it's nice to jump on the various screens and collect information, reading inside the characters documents or private conversation is fun, and let you wish you had more freedom in doing that. I don't advice spending much money on this game, but if you're curious to see how it plays grab it on sale and you might spend a few hours investigating for Orwell, but you'll end up disappointed by the game structure, that seems interesting and full of potential, but end up being just an almost 100% linear reading game in which you just click on the info waiting to see what will happen next.