You are the security detail/commander on the UN's Air Force One. There's terrorists, a murder mystery, negotiations, and at least one conspiracy. All of this happens within 4 hours of playtime. A mess? Yeah. Janky? Definitely. Unique? Absolutely. Worth playing? If you like narrative experiments.

The biggest strength of Consortium is also its biggest weakness: the people behind it just really, REALLY wanted it to exist. It's bursting with passion, unique ideas and original worldbuilding, to the point that maybe it's worth playing just because there's nothing else like it. It's also it's poorly marketed, unbalanced, unfocused, weirdly paced, and falls in love with itself a little too much.

So what do you do in Consortium? You participate in what is essentially an interactive play, kinda like that Facade game from a while ago. An event happens, you go to that event, you can handle it in a few different ways, and the game reacts to that. Sounds good, until you realize Consortium is full of contradictions:

It's action-packed and full of events, but you're always reactive.

There are choices, but only about two actually have an impact on the greater plot.

There's a murder mystery, but it has no hard evidence and can be solved almost instantly.

There's a conspiracy, but it's so vague it might as well just be sequel bait.

There's a whole combat system with stealth, lethal and non-lethal rounds, but it's almost entirely optional.

There are over a dozen named, voiced characters, all with detailed character profiles, but about 5 of them actually matter in the grand scheme of things.

Character writing is sharp, the lore is excruciatingly long.

It also doesn't help the game is about as stable as a warplane - it crashes, it has animation bugs, character scripts run simultaneously, its UI is dreadful, and generally it needed less programmers and writers and more actual designers. It's JANK. But you can play it fully.

Again, Consortium exists because 6 guys really wanted it to. And I'm happy it does. It's the sort of thing only indies with a dream could make, and I'm here for it. Now we just gotta hope these guys actually get a producer and make the bloody sequel.