
Witness to Mass Incarceration is a narrative-driven interactive story based on my life in federal prison. It is a brutally honest portrayal of the lack of humanity, how our lives inside are at risk every day, and the place you are forced to go within yourself to survive.
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About
2026 Webby People’s Voice Winner — Games: Social Impact & Public Service
How do you capture the inhumanity of prison?
The night before I left for prison, my mother told me prison would be harder for me than the concentration camp had been for her. WITNESS to Mass Incarceration: Chapter 1 is the true story of my first day inside federal prison, where within hours I realized I am no longer in the free world, and that my survival depended on learning the rules, both spoken and unspoken.
How do you translate that inhumanity into game design?
The computer game team decided to use a 2D narrative-driven journey, pixel art and point-and-click exploration to tell my story. We were committed to telling this story authentically and to build an immersive narrative to show the gamer the reality of the harsh life all prisoners face.
Gaming techniques like dragging and sliding objects were used in furtherance of the story. Each interaction reveals another layer of prison’s reality, immersing you in the fear, uncertainty, and emotional strain that define life behind bars.
This first chapter is one in a series which tells the story of my arrest, conviction, incarceration and release. We are creating this game for you to know and feel what it is like to face incarceration. It is our hope that this game brings awareness of the issue of mass incarceration.
Genres
Stats
Languages: English**languages with full audio support
Engagement
Reviews
Themes across 41 recent reviews and how positive each mention is. A keyword signal, not full sentiment analysis.
Reviews
First, this isn't a game. It's not fun. It's more like a interactive documentary. If your idea of fun is slow dialogue, biased story telling, and clicking things randomly hoping something will happen, then this is for you. The woman in the game goes to prison for tax evasion. This is never explained. It paints a picture that prison life is terrible. Which is what prison life is. If prison life was easy then everyone would be doing crimes, right? So basically, this woman believes that she is not at fault for the tax evasion, blames it on someone else (which is never explained), then she goes to prison. Some people will think this game is amazing and tells a brave story, which is very subjected and political. Peace.
Soulless writing, lifeless voice acting — a dull, boring visual novel not worth your attention.
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Concurrent players on Steam, sampled daily since tracking started.
Hours played at review time, across 41 reviews with recorded playtime.
positive critical· bar length = how often the theme comes up
They never even go into or mention slightly what she was even arrested for, which doesn't make a whole lot of sense since someone could just google Evie's name and find out so why hide it in the game? I felt more punished then she probably was being forced to manually undress someone as well! I just don't see the point of this, everyone knows prison is suppose to be bad so what does anyone get out of playing this? I mean it's good I guess for her to let her story be told but the game player gets nothing?
Dont do the crime if you dont want to do the time. How do you know the male guard and female guard were flirting with each other behind a glass window? maybe they were laughing at you. And i seriously dont want to pull down the panties of a criminal. SKIP!
Visual novel about Evie Litwok, ex-prisoner and real-life person, that tells how she felt about her first time in a prison. Her story is narrated and voiced by Evie Litwok herself, even though the voice acting isn't the greatest. Also, there are rough point and click interactions that half the time don't work properly. The pixel art is decent. There is something that has annoyed me a little, and I think is of vital importance to someone who tells about their life in prison: why aren't there any mention in the whole game of what is the reason she got into prison? She was incarcerated for a reason, and the reason that turned her life upside down is probably an important detail for her story (after a quick search on the web, I found out she was sentenced for tax fraud, and I repeat this detail isn't in the game at all). Witness to Mass Incarceration was a peculiar experience. A game told from the point of view of an ex-prisoner is not something you find very often. I was on the fence about whether to recommend it or not, but I'm going to let it pass with a positive recommendation since I enjoyed it. But beware that the game is still a work in progress, only 1 chapter is available at the moment. And one last thing: why are the credits a sort of cringeworthy LinkedIn posts?
There are many heartbreaking stories of women who struggled with abuse, slipped through the cracks, and survived long periods of time in correctional facilities. This is not one of those stories.
[url=https://www.brennancenter.org/topics/criminal-justice] The United States has less than 5 percent of the world’s population and nearly one-quarter of its prisoners. [/url] [url=https://www.sentencingproject.org/][/url]
Personally I did not mind undressing the grandma. I did that mission multiple times hoping I could get a Steam Achievment. But overall the rest of the game is very boring except for the peeing simulation. I found that to be very exotic. I was confused why I needed a credit card for a plane ticket when I never got to fly in a plane. I only road in a taxi, which was a let down. I like the main character and would be very nice to her in the prison cell if she were my cell mate. I would wake up at night and pet her if I could.
This is a very eye opening game to experience. The first 20 minutes of the game really has you relate to her experience with her parents. The dialogue is very heart felt and the story is very touching. It brings up an issue that needs awareness in the United States at a time like this.
As a player, this game makes you feel the psychological consequences of being incarcerated firsthand through the dialogue, interactive elements, and animations. The discomfort you might experience from some parts is intentional and meant to place you in the shoes of a prisoner. Overall, this is an important and relevant game to play if you want to better understand what being in prison does to the incarcerated --- looking forward to Chapter 2!
Audience
Estimated from the language of this game's reviews — a proxy for where players are, not official Steam demographics.