Beholder

Beholder marks the first title, published to Steam still available, from Alawar. Now despite this not being their first official work this game still has a lot of minor kinks in face of what the game does right, with audio problems from the environment to the wonky voice overs. To fully get into the world it creates a simple, yet compelling narrative, centred around a man who takes over a hotel and moves in with his family. Already the tone is set with the previous care taker being dragged out for undisclosed reasons which clearly insunates a behind the scenes take over. Your family is put at risk but that is just one way to interpret the protagonist. At the core how the game really grips you is with the versatility in your ability to play out scenarios. You decide the moral compass of the character. However saying you decided is about as truthful in saying Winston willingly took over the hotel. There's a fast in game clock clicking down the days, this game refuses to pull its punches. Hitting you with one moral dilemma after the other. What is the right option for an abused victim between taking revenge on the attacker (killing them) or leaving them to die? How far will you go to get money for your children? When I lost my family, the one I was doing everything to protect, the only reasonable way to role play that was through that was by having Winston wait out the days only taking phone calls. This is a short game, easy to pick up, but is what allows every moment to carry so much more weight. So it's no wonder on my first playthrough it left such strong impact. Beholder is direct, to the point and most importantly in a age where games are 10-20+ hours long Beholder has the decency to respect you the players time, what a wonderfully well crafted game I do hope that manage to capture the same essence when I play the subsequent titles