Recent reviews by moddedBear

The best game.

There's nothing else like it.

I beat it months ago and still think about it regularly.

No other piece of media has had the same impact on me before or since.

Don't let the 'free' price tag fool you, NaissanceE is a must-play if you're into exploration and ominous atmosphere. Though it's not a conventionally scary game, the best way I know of to describe NaissanceE is "architectural horror". The world of NaissanceE wasn't built for you, you're an alien here. There's something vaguely unsettling yet beautiful about NaissanceE's infinite vastness.

A perfect game to unwind with while you listen to some music or podcasts. The procedurally generated worlds continually keep things fresh. By default the game displays your score in the corner and gives you audio feedback on how you're doing, but this can be turned off by activating zen mode which I recommend (don't worry, it still silently tracks your score). Well worth full price and a steal on sale.

Orwell has definitely made it onto my list of indie favorites. One of the most interesting and engaging games I've played in a long time.

Story
The story and characters are well written, realistic, and relatable. The pacing is perfect and each chapter will leave you anxious to get into the next one. The world has depth and lives and breathes. Your actions feel as though they carry real weight with consequences that follow you. This is the sort of story that you'll think about and speculate about even when you're not playing. It's obvious a lot of thought was put into Orwell.

Gameplay
I think it's fair to say Orwell is more of an interactive novel than a game. But that by no means is a mark against it.

Gameplay is simple but effective. You play as an investigator trying to solve a recent bombing using whatever online information, public or private, is made available to you. When you come across information that your system (named Orwell) recognizes as relevant to one of your target persons, it becomes highlighted and you can choose to upload it to Orwell's database where your superiors can then see it and act on it.

But this surveillance system isn't perfect. Sometimes conflicting or irrelevant information will be highlighted and you'll have to use your best judgement when choosing what to upload. I won't explain more in depth than that - I think the rest of the gameplay is best experienced when you discover it yourself. But I promise the gameplay isn't the mindless drag and drop that it might seem.

And what I thought was neat is that while some aspects of the gameplay might seem arbitrary or slightly confusing at first, these mechanics have a real canon, in-world explanation that is revealed as you progress. The gameplay really feels like part of the story here.

Performance
It'll probably run on just about anything.

Length
There are five chapters, each of which took me 45-60 minutes or so. Some people might complete it faster since I'm the methodical, read-everything-before-moving-on sort (which is rewarding with Orwell). Very little (if any) replay value though. Some people might recommend playing it all in one sitting, but I would say taking day or two long breaks like I did is the way to go.

Price
Full price at the time of this review is $10. I was able to grab Orwell while it was temporarily free. $10 seems a little bit steep at first, but considering the ~5 hours I got out of it and the impression it left on me, I would say Orwell is easily worth that much. You can probably also count on Orwell going on sale or getting it cheap in a bundle if you're still on the fence.

Conclusion
Get it. If you enjoy indie games, get it. If you like a good detective story, get it. If surveillance or digital privacy even remotely interest you (which they should), get it.