Orwell is only getting more relevant in the years since it’s release given it’s subject matter of government surveillance. It is kind of a visual novel puzzle game where you navigate different platforms finding bits of info that you can tag to the database which in turn can find you more info. As you go on you start to unravel a story of who was behind the bombings. The bits of info are highlighted so you can’t miss them and you also don’t always have to tag them. This is because some info is out of context. For instance someone saying that they are being tortured by cupcakes is obviously not actual torture but you can still tag the person involved as a torturer. Having the discretion is nice but there are other times where you have to tag certain data to progress that I don’t feel was data that must have been tagged or as relevant as the game made it. I also don’t like how you can’t untag data. I also felt that at the end of the game there was supposed to be multiple ways to handle the outcome but I could only see one or possibly two. I don’t know why the other ways weren’t available to me as I can’t think of a story reason that I shouldn’t have been able to pull off what i wanted. The story was good but the twists near the end were simply fantastic. The UI for the game was easy to get used to and had a good design. I also liked how new parts of the software were revealed as they became needed. The game has no voice acting but that wasn’t an issue wand made sense given the fact that outside of recorded calls this was all just you at a computer. The puzzle aspect was that you have to scour the various blogs; calls; emails; etc to find info you can use to further the game as well as provide additional depth details and context.
I played Orwell on Linux. It froze on me once but other than that I encountered no issues and noticed no spelling errors. There are no graphics options and the game has a 60 FPS cap. You can save on exit but there is just one save slot so you can’t undo choices or have multiple save files. Performance was good with no noticeable lag. Alt-Tab Didn’t work.
Graphics Engine: Unity
Graphics API: OpenGL
Game Version Played: 1.4.7479.33238
Disk Space Used: 639 MB
CPU Usage: 16-43 %
RAM Usage: 3.5-4.6 GB
I enjoyed Orwell both for the way the game play was used as well as for the story and characters. I wish the ending had have been more open but as it was it’s still a great game. I finished it in four hours and 13 minutes and can say it is easily worth it’s current price tag of $11.49 CAD.
My System:
Intel i7-6700 | 16GB DDR4-3000 CL15 | Intel HD 530 | Mesa 21.2.6 | Trisquel 10.0.1 | Mate 1.24.0 | Kernel 5.18.4-gnu