"Orwell" Review

I am officially starting a cutoff. After this and The Last Guardian, I'm not going to play anything new until the end of the year lists are done and posted. This second to last review of the 2016 selections is a rather important one. Surely I don't need to tell you that absolutely everything you do is monitored? Surely I don't need to tell you that our government is constantly spying on our emails, phone calls, texts, everything? There are plenty of tv shows, movies, games, and books that tackle this subject trying to open people's eyes, but none are quite like Orwell. You see, Orwell works under the assumption that everybody knows surveillance is happening. Rather than try to inform its players of this fact, Orwell tries to show its players the magnitude that the surveillance state could reach. I came across Orwell during the Steam winter sale as I was scouring the "Under $10" bin for small indie games to play. It seemed right up my alley subject-wise, so despite the fact that it looked like a text-based adventure game, I went ahead and purchased it. Having just completed it, I can say that this is one of the few examples of a game that is truly worth its price in a positive way. Let us - me, you, and the government agents currently watching as I type this sentence - begin!
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In Orwell, you play as an investigator working for a surveillance program in a fictional country. This program, not-so-subtley named "Orwell," can scour through any web page, any person's personal accounts, and any person's calls, chats, or emails. Orwell was introduced into the Nation as a secret side effect of a new "Safety Bill" in the government that allows for citizens to be detained on mere suspicion of criminal activity. One day, a bomb goes off in a prominent plaza killing some people and injuring others. As a new investigator for Orwell, you are charged with discovering who is behind the bombing. Throughout the subsequent five days, this web of cause and effect grows larger and more complex. As the story continues, legitimately shocking revelations about characters come to light, and while it isn't flawlessly executed, it is effective in getting its point across.
Let me be blunt, dear readers, Orwell is freaking creepy. The fact that it is set in 2017 and not the distant future adds to this effect, but the creepiness is definitely due to its stellar character development. Never in my life have I seen characters so well defined. Every aspect of their lives: their online personas, the way that they talk in different methods of communication, the particular language they use when talking to particular other characters, the many pictures of themselves they've uploaded, has been laid out for you to see. There is just a level of detail in this game that I have never seen before. In chats, the timestamps above text change dynamically (i.e. "just now" becomes "1 min ago"), chats will occasionally show that two people are typing at the same time and one person will accidentally respond before the other person is finished typing (just like in real life). There are also sparse word misspellings in heated moments between characters. The attention to detail is simply astounding. Orwell is a creepy game because it definitely feels like you're spying on real people leading real lives.
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The fact that the entirety of gameplay consists of constructing profiles for each character based off of pieces of data from their online activity definitely adds to the creepiness. Essentially, Orwell highlights chunks of text that it believes are relevant to the current investigation, and you choose whether or not to upload this data to Orwell's profile of the person the data pertains to. It sounds simple enough, but it isn't enough just to upload everything you see. Some pieces of information are downright inaccurate, and sometimes the information found in two datachunks conflicts with each other, and you must decide which one is accurate. You will need to read through the sources given to you and interpret the datachunks based on what you learn if you want to catch the people behind the bombing. Now, you can also go full Stanley Parable and help out the people responsible by uploading exclusively unhelpful information, but I didn't know that when I was playing, so I have no clue what changes if you do that.
All creepiness aside, I found the gameplay fascinating. As I mentioned, the web grows larger and larger as the game progresses. This means that eventually you can sift through possibly 50 different documents, over 20 private conversations, and five full computers. I may have mentioned this in past reviews, but I am a big fan of puzzle games that work with incredibly intricate, involved puzzles. I loved the The Room games, and I loved The Guest earlier this year. While Orwell isn't exactly the same kind of puzzle game, it is still incredibly intricately designed. I suppose that my point is this: If you are like me and enjoy a bit of an intellectual challenge, I would recommend spending the necessary $10 on Orwell.
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As much as I personally enjoyed Orwell, it isn't perfect. Earlier I mentioned that the story was not perfectly executed, and the reason is this: There are a number of times throughout the story where the truth would turn out completely different from what the evidence suggested. There was a particular chapter in which I had to determine where the next terrorist attack might take place, and all the evidence pointed to location A, but then it turned out to take place in location B. Likewise, there was a point when all the evidence suggested that person A was responsible for sending a certain email. I had proof that the email was written from person A's device and that person A would not give up their device to anyone. Well, it turned out that person B was actually behind it and no explanation was given. The final revelation was especially guilty of this. It felt like it came out of nowhere and no evidence in any of the sources indicated that it was ture. It really feels like Orwell makes the opposite of what you've uncovered happen in order to ensure that the story continues in a certain way. Maybe that was meant to be a statement about the futility of the surveillance state, or maybe it was meant to represent how the surveillance state will frame things in whatever light is required to fit the government's story, but it isn't particularly good game design.
Besides that, the only real other flaw that I found in Orwell was the fact that it was sometimes difficult to actually grab the datachunks. Datachunks essentially look like highlighted text, but only when you have the mouse right on the text itself will you be able to grab the datachunk. My instinct was always just to have the mouse somewhere on the highlighting, and while it was a small annoyance, it was one that was constantly present.
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Orwell is a difficult game to talk about. On one hand, it is incredibly simple. On the other hand, it is more intricate and complex than words can describe. I would recommend Orwell to just about everyone with the notable exception of people who require action in their games. If you enjoy puzzles, if you enjoy logic-based gameplay, if you enjoy good character development, if you enjoy worlds built with so much attention to detail that you feel like you are actually spying on a person's chat window, or if you just want to play a game that covers this particular subject matter, then Orwell is for you.
Let us review:

Unjustified story twists - 0.7
Difficult to grab datachunks sometimes - 0.3

So, the final score for Orwell is...
9/10 - Fantastic
Excellent work, Osmotic Studios/Surpriseattack Games, excellent work.