Written by Ty 2022 Cohort
I was a fan of mystery puzzle video games for a while in high school. I used to play Criminal Case for hours on my phone despite being a hardcore gamer at the time. There is just something about the atmosphere of this type of game, whether it’s the music, the ability to move around scenes feeling the tension of the crime that took place but at the same time knowing time is frozen, that forces players to emerge into the world of the game. It all eventually comes down to how well the game involves you as a detective (mostly) in the story and how your judgment of what you see and hear affects the outcome of the play.
Even though it’s been a while since I played mystery games (hardly any game lately), I was assigned to play a mystery game I’ve never played or heard of before, Orwell.
The game takes place in a country named “The Nation,” where a strong surveillance system called Orwell monitors every citizen’s actions online. You, the player, are a detective trying to solve a couple of tragic events in a city called Bonton. You can browse through web pages that post news about what’s happening in the city, observe suspects’ activities on a social media platform called Timelines, and much more to find out who was responsible for the tragic events.
At first, I found the game boring; there was much reading. The web pages in the game take split seconds to load, which was irritating as the game could be faster-paced. It was only when the game introduced a section for observing suspects’ text messages, audio calls, and emails that I started getting emerged in the game. Probably because there was some motion, I don’t know.
After my 3-hour-long gaming/reading session, I got a good grasp of the game’s core mechanics and an idea of where the story -which my beloved classmates spoiled- was going.
Overall, the storyline is well-written. The twisted plots kept me on the edge of my seat; you don’t see them quite intensified as they are in Orwell. Even with the game lacking the simplest gaming mechanic that other mystery games usually have other than dragging and dropping highlighted data and browsing through different panels, case in point, Criminal Case had some puzzles solving and Hidden Objects Puzzle Adventure mechanics, it still managed to make me feel in control. I love the satisfying feeling I get when I know what I’m about to expect in the news after I have just found a clue, as much as I love the feeling of being wrong when the evidence renders a suspect innocent.
I highly recommend you, dear reader, to play it, as my review of my experience barely scratches the surface of what the game has to offer.