“We are always watching.” Or so the creators of Beholder, an indie strategy game from Warm Lamp Games would have us believe. As Carl, the newly appointed building manager of a state run apartment, it’s your job to keep an eye on the building’s tenants, while simultaneously taking care of your wife and children. But rather than making sure their “happiness” is at maximum and their toilet is working (this is a dystopian future after all), your primary duties are to spy on your neighbors, gather (or plant) evidence against them, and report them to the authorities.
As you begin, you receive various tasks from your government overlords. These include such things as installing video cameras in their apartments when they aren’t home, spying on them through the door’s peephole, and finding evidence on crimes against the state. At the same time, your family may require items that you will need to find money for as well. And so the tough decisions begin. Do you continue to do good by your government ministry and earn resources to help your family? Or do you silently rebel against your overlords? The choice is up to you. And like any choice, it will have consequences.
Beholder is pretty graphically minimalist, using an almost entirely black and white color palette to convey the bleak despair of this world. The art style is purposefully crude, as befitting an indie title such as this. However, there are some minor touches to each of the individual characters you interact with that add some much needed flavor to the proceedings. And to be fair, this is not the type of game that needs to rely on splashy graphics and sprites to excel.
Gameplay is generally straightforward with a menu that tells you exactly what you need to do. The challenge comes less in completing a task and more in deciding whether you want to complete the task or not. The game itself starts out quite slowly, and I found myself, even in tutorial mode, a bit confused about how to get started. However, once you get over this initial hump, the gameplay can get quite engrossing. This is definitely a game that will not appeal to everyone. The relatively low-fi graphics and somewhat simplistic gameplay may be a turn off to some. But if you give yourself a chance to fully immerse yourself into this world, you may find yourself slowly being pulled into the seductive grasp of this Totalitarian state.
Rating: 3.5/5 Atoms
from Nerd Reactor
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