Orwell Demo

People fear the possibility of being under constant surveillance, especially now that modern technology pretty much allows for this to happen. In fact, many believe we are already being watched at every step, it’s just that the authorities hide the fact that they are eavesdropping. Whatever the case might be, George Orwell’s 1984 has become a bestseller again in the last few years.

Orwell is an interactive story game with puzzles and simple gameplay mechanics, in which your goal is to collect information and investigate citizens in order to find out about their nefarious deeds. It’s actually a lot like a detective game, except that in this case you are using the Internet and an unhealthy sense of justice to go through people’s tweets and read their IM conversations.

The story takes place in a fictional country that depends on a system called Orwell to collect information about its citizens and keep detailed data about everyone in the nation. You play the role of a researcher whose job is to analyze this data and use it to find the culprits behind a series of terror attacks, but things get pretty morally ambiguous soon thereafter.

The scary thing about Orwell is that it’s inspired by our society, so it borrows many concepts from the real world. Thus, one of your tasks is to investigate a suspect’s Facebook timeline and tweets, which gets pretty scary when you realize how a simple Internet joke can be misinterpreted and land you in prison for terrorism. Granted, this demo only covers a small portion of the entire story, so it’s a bit linear at this point.

You also have to deal with a very intrusive tutorial and way too much guidance, since everything is highlighted for you when it comes to collecting evidence. There are some choices every now and again, but too few of them to justify multiple playthroughs at this point. However, the whole story should be a lot less linear, at least if the developers keep their word.

In the end, Orwell is a very good concept that’s certainly worth your attention, but so far it’s a bit short and linear. Thus, you might want to wait for more episodes to come out, especially since the difficulty level is not very high either.