First Episode Of Dystopian Nightmare Orwell: Ignorance Is Strength Released

I've got this feeling, somebody's watching meee... Maybe that's because I've been spending time with dystopian adventure game Orwell: Ignorance is Strength.

Just like in the first season, you're stepping into the shoes of a government official in a top-secret department of the Orwell surveillance program. Spy on your fellow citizens to defend The Nation from danger. That is what you're doing, right? Right?

The first episode (out of three) starts with a political crisis threatening to plunge The Nation and its neighbour, Parges, into violent civil unrest. An officer of the Pargesian military has gone missing and the only clue is a phone call...

And that's where you come in: through surveillance of phone calls, messages, websites, computers, and mobile phones, you decide what information gets to be processed by the Orwell system and what is irrelevant. This is your subtle way of shaping the story, and of course it is all kinds of ethically questionable - as if the name Orwell wasn't a bit on the nose already.

The way you're interacting with the Orwell system allows us a brief and rather alarming glimpse at how the things we may perceive as objective are, in fact, malleable and way too easy to tamper with. And even if such a system is thankfully still in the realm of dystopian science fiction, it feels not too far off, frankly. I'd love to elaborate, but there's really no way to talk about Orwell's intricacies without spoiling the fun.

Once again, the game's slick low-poly presentation is intriguing and the story just draws you in. While the first season was pretty exciting from the get-go with its impending threat of terror attacks, season two slowly builds up towards an intricate tale of espionage and (possible) counter-espionage... and then it's over way too soon.

This first episode will probably take you around an hour to complete. I really hope the following episodes (which will be released every two weeks) are a little more fleshed out and can build on the rather excellent setup. Either way, it looks like Orwell has me in its grip once again.

You can purchase Orwell: Ignorance is Strength from GOG and Steam for $9.99. This gets you all three episodes as soon as they are released. For more information, visit the game's website and follow developer Osmotic Studios on Twitter.

from IndieGames.com http://ift.tt/2omdklc