Orwell: Keeping an Eye On You

Worth playing if you like visual novels. If you expected this game to be more of a detective puzzle, as I did, then you better not waste your time on it.

剧情非常之离谱的“反乌托邦”游戏，之所以打了引号是因为其实根本就没什么真正的反乌托邦元素，如果你想讲一个反对监控保护公民隐私的故事，你就tm的应该讲无辜的百姓因为嘴上两句抱怨，生气时的口不择言，被社会迫害后的绝望申诉而被污蔑成恐怖分子进而饱受牢狱之灾，而不是让tm的一个日子过得太好了天天抑郁的富二代，b文化没有还能登报纸挣稿费的喷子男，和逻辑像被大运碾过的杀人狂装白莲花的恐怖分子当主角，md杀完人被我找到还喷我侵犯他们的公民隐私，还让我牺牲自己毁掉这个阻止了恐怖袭击的监控系统，我真tm服了，这简直就是世界上最反“反乌托邦”的游戏，我tm无话可说的

I really wish I liked it because on the paper it's 100% a game for me but I'm forced to admit I just don't. First of all it's not detective work, you just drop pieces of information in a database hoping it makes the story progress. Because you're not technically forced to drop all the information in the database, you quickly try to have an impact on the story's progression by keeping some info to yourself, but the story only progresses when specific info is used and you never know which info is necessary or not so you can't really make informed choices on what to give Orwell and what to not. I quickly find myself stuck with the story not progressing because I've decided to keep a piece of information that's mandatory for the story to continue and so I have to start from the top and review everything which is tedious and drop random bits of information I've kept until I find the one that was necessary for the story to continue which means I really can't choose what I keep or don't keep, or I straight up give all the info away from the start to not have to review everything later once I'm stuck which again means I can't choose what I keep or don't keep. There seems to be a system of highlighting the files where there still is relevant information but I don't understand how it works. Sometimes files are highlighted and there's nothing left on them and sometimes they aren't highlighted and there's still important things on them. It's very confusing. I also suspect the political messaging of the game is really not so subtle and just "violence is bad" with no nuance but I can't tell you for sure because I'm too frustrated with the gameplay to go to the end of the story at this point. My other issue with the writing that I just can't seem to get over is that it makes zero sense that people who are fighting surveillance would post on the internet about it with their full name and photo or extremely basic aliases. Not posting about your actions on the internet is activism 101.

Advertising this as a detective game is a bit misleading. I don't think there is much to 'detect' or deduce in this game at all. Most of the gameplay is just clicking on a highlighted text chunk (because your progress is tied to collecting those) and then reading a new dialogue/article and clicking highlighted chunks in those. There are maybe 5-10 places where there are "conflicting datachunks" where you have an option to choose (and only a couple of those are of any particular meaning to the story). You can also sometimes choose to withhold the information, but that sometimes proves hard as you do not really know which 'datachunk' is needed to activate the progression. All in all the story is ok and the gameplay is chill, but as it is this game might as well have been a visual novel.

I actually enjoyed the gameplay and story. It reminded me a lot of Do Not Feed the Monkeys (which I love). BUT the guy popping up after every piece of evidence I found was actually so irritating that I considered giving up a couple times. It spoon feeds you the answers as well. I think I only actually had to use my brain to figure something out like twice Lol otherwise the damn guy gives you recaps of everything you do as you're doing it and it shows you exactly where to find the info you need. It's also pretty short and more of a story than a "detective" game but you can probably get a few different endings if you replay it.

结尾嗯放12分钟固定播片不可跳过不可加速只为强行洗白极端自由主义，本来文本播放一秒吐一个字就慢得要死还搞这种傲慢无比的演出形式和意识形态霸凌，实属烂尾！

玩法还行，剧情写的什么玩意，高开低走，玩到最后给我气死了，[spoiler] 看得出来制作者最后想让我们选择反政府，但是我实在无法和放炸弹的恐怖分子共情 [/spoiler]