Headliner: NoviNews
Ironically, the people review-bombing this game over pronouns did it a huge favour. It seems I’m not alone among those who’d never have found it otherwise. On the whole, I’m glad I did.
THE PROS:
It’s well-produced and easy to play, and it’s a very cool idea. I really enjoy the atmosphere of the streets of Novistan as you trudge home each day and see your decisions reflected in the conversations and events around you. The sound and visual design really sells moments of shock and crisis. I also quite like the vague (or not so vague) sense of meta awareness all the NPCs have of being in a new timeline when you start a new game. It’s a nice touch.
– Real player with 28.1 hrs in game
Read More: Best Interactive Fiction Politics Games.
Overview
The great fun that was Headliner has returned and is better than ever. First the player controlled the news in the nation of Galixia, but now in Headliner: NoviNews, the player controls the news in the nation of Novistan which receives a similar number of immigrants from Learis as Galixia, and where the issue of healthcare makes for as much of a debate as in Galixia. What’s different is that Novistan has issues with a new synthetic alcoholic beverage called BetterBuzz, and has a xenophobic Prime Minister who dislikes Learis and is easily alienated by dissent. Unlike in Galixia, the purists (people who haven’t been genetically modified) aren’t persecuted by Novistanian society.
– Real player with 23.9 hrs in game
Jury Trial
Interested in creating your own cases? With the ingame case editor you will be able to write your own cases and share them with the community. Whether fictional or recreated cases, the ingame editor got you covered.
In this law simulation RPG you will join a group of innocence lawyers who take on the fight for justice, representing the poorest of the poor, the victims of the criminal justice system and the wrongfully convicted. However, defending the defenseless costs a lot of money. Therefore you will also be in charge of high profile cases to generate funds for your fight for justice. Work through the case material, find inconsistencies and discover new evidence, analyze and select the jurors and experts, question the witnesses and convince the jury at trial. Your clients depend on you for they have nowhere else to go but prison…
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Play the campaign, the single case files or download new cases created by the community from the Steam Workshop
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Create and upload your own cases using the ingame case editor
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Search for evidence in a variety of different case materials
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Question witnesses and jurors to find their specific traits and opinions
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Choose the jury that fits your client
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Try the case in the court of law
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Solicit legal and illegal help to find the loophole or evidence that breaks the case
The game is set in a fictional country deeply divided by racial profiling, prejudice and social injustice. A deep bias runs through the country and its people. Apart from your courtroom skills as a gifted negotiator, it’s crucial for you to find a jury that gives your client a chance. Otherwise every argument and scientific fact might be in vain because no one will listen.
Your potential jurors consist of:
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Ten unique regions
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Four ethnic groups
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Six religions
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Four political currents
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Four levels of wealth and education
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And six further defining traits out of a pool of over sixty traits
This game is a passion project of two indie developers and we’re looking forward to hearing your feedback. If you have questions, suggestions or might be interested in a offering your help as a potential beta tester or translator, please contact us using the Steam Community section or via social media on Twitter, Discord & Instagram:
Wonderland Nights: White Rabbit’s Diary
You are the white rabbit working for the queen of hearts. There is a 4 day submit with the other kings and queens from the other countries in wonderland to decide how they will govern between war, magic, trade and borders. For the 4 days you’re there it’s your job to schedule the activities between the kings, queens and their daughters/sons/advisors.
Quite an interesting game, I’d say. Basically, you will unlock mini plots and stories between the characters depending on who you pair off with who. Re-playability is a given. It’s highly advisable to play it many many times to get all of the plots and it will involve a lot of trial and error for a lot of the acheivements without a guide. Luckily for you, 1 complete playthrough is quite short so you wont have to worry.
– Real player with 4.0 hrs in game
Read More: Best Interactive Fiction Strategy Games.
Jey’s Empire
Great game! Very complex, tons of weird ways to get from A to B, and very funny under the very serious veneer. I saved America from the Red Menace by making a child cry. The only Steam achievement I’ve ever been proud of!
– Real player with 75.5 hrs in game
The dev is a really cool dude, I’ve helped him out with a few projects. The Discord server is also good and I’d recommend his other games like Cold War 2, Cauldrons of War - Barbarossa, and Cat Fu MI.
– Real player with 25.1 hrs in game
Orwell: Keeping an Eye On You
Preface
This review is being written before the conclusion of the game in episode five. I’ve played through the first four episodes a couple times exploring different outcomes, however, as episode five is not out yet I’m not able to comment on the totallity of the story.
The Machine
Orwell has a very close Person of Interest vibe. The government of the fictitious country has obtained a Machine, or System, that surveils the populous gathering information however it does not act on the gathered information. The idea of the game is that the system, aptly named Orwell, isn’t able to decern human subtlety, sarcasim, or deciet. As such, the fictious government has outsourced the task of resolving conflicts in the data, and identifying what is relevant and what is not. You as the player take on this role as an outsider to the country, tasked with sifting through the data that Orwell gives you access to inorder to identify person(s) of interest. This is a role somewhat like Person of Interest’s Harold Finch.
– Real player with 14.4 hrs in game
My playtime: 10h (based on steam, 100% achievement; 2.5x playthrough)
Grindy Achievement(s): No.
Optional Achievement(s): Yes (17 achievements).
Difficult Achievement(s): No.
Intro
Orwell: Keeping an Eye On You is a massive information gathering system where you, an investigator, is taking a role in sorting the relevant data and fix conflicting data that the system gathered to assist a crime. The game has story branching that persists over 5 chapters.
– Real player with 10.5 hrs in game
Adventures in Morality: An Interactive Case Study
First to the creator(s) of the ICS, you should be aware that there appears to be a bug with the cassette recordings. Every time you find one and play it, it also plays all the ones that you have found and played before, simultaneously, making understanding anything pass the third one nearly impossible. Onto the review.
This is an interesting experience. The idea being that an AI is the one conducting the Case Study on you is both intriguing and perhaps a bit alarming and I mean both of those ideas in as to whether you accept that at face value or if you accept that as part of a fictional narrative. I was actually most interested in finding and reading the log notes about the “childhood” and growth of said AI, and I got a good snicker at the mention of bonono monkies (i dont have to google, i actually saw a N.G show on them so totally got it ;) As for the Subject of the case study, this idea of sympathy types, while the particular labels used to describe said types might be newish, the idea behind it is not. I was reading about where people fall into self, tribe, and human kind in self help and spiritual enlightenment books back in the 80’s and 90’s. And those authors were NOT representing the knowledge as something new; but, rather as something very old and mostly forgotten or purposely suppressed (Those in power naturally tend to keep those below them divided and weakened through the use of Us vs them, whether thats Individualism vs Communism or Tribalism in one form or another.) The one thing none of those authors ever did was threaten to use the knowledge being shared to bring about an apocalypse and try to divide up the world based on results of some case study. Really not sure what to make of that.
– Real player with 0.8 hrs in game
Opening video has a couple good lines.
The rest is random questions that don’t make any sense as a test of morality. Not to mention that just by walking around you get 80+ ‘Humanity’ rating.
– Real player with 0.7 hrs in game
Ishmael
Ishmael was a weird experience, I’m still not sure how to feel about it.
First of all, I didn’t like writing, it wasn’t immersive for me at all. Tho English is very good, I didn’t notice any typos. The whole atmosphere seemed so distant, so alien. But then I actually thought that maybe it’s how it should be ‘cause the world described in the game really IS so foreign to me.
It’s the shortest novel I’ve ever played, just about 15 minutes long. We learn the story of a young Palestinian boy. The way children spend their free time playing outdoor games with just stones and sand wasn’t one bit gloomy for me. That’s practically how I spent my childhood growing in a Siberian village—playing snowballs, making snowmen, snow huts in winter, hopscotch or a great number of other games in summer. I actually believe, that time was great fun without computers, internet… But in the game the boy is bored. I didn’t feel related. Of course, when it’s war, occupation, death nearby it changes everything significantly.
– Real player with 0.8 hrs in game
a boring game with a very bautiful purpose.
i’d like to reward the purpose, ‘cause there is a deep meaning in this game, unfortunally, it’s not touching as it should be.
it’s actually pretty dull(even if short), it ’s just a glimpse of daily life for a child, used by the developer to make you understand how people see war, and how people are raised up to bacame soldier in middle easth.
– Real player with 0.7 hrs in game
Orwell: Ignorance is Strength
Orwell: Ignorance is Strength (genre: Story Telling - Investigation)
SCORE: 7.5/10
I have to say this game is more direct, genuine than the first game but lack the crush of having the ability to handling life and death situation on your hand. Also in the first game, the ending is somewhat more impactful than this one not to say this game’s ending is not. Secondly, I understand why this game sometimes get mixed reviews even though most of them is positive, it is mostly based on preference and I guess the person who tends to read more will eventually enjoy this game more than those who referred storytelling games like heavy rains and until dawn, etc. But even that doesn’t justify why this game isn’t good in my opinion.
– Real player with 29.4 hrs in game
Report for duty, Agent. Time to gossip our way to victory.
With season one of Orwell (or well, before we actually knew we would be getting another Orwell game) being an incredible experience, who wouldn’t want to revisit that universe again? Who wouldn’t want to be the person that spies rather than the one that gets spied on? We return with a whole new case to dig our hands into and more secrets to peek at.
Right as you start up, you will see changes that improves the immersion. Before you are even put into the system, you have to take a small survey to determine if you will be accepted. If you played the first Orwell game, this is also the time to choose whether you want to link your playthrough with it. This not only lets you skip the tutorial but whatever you did in that save carries over. If you haven’t noticed yet (like I didn’t) this canonically takes place during the events of season one. While you and well… past you will not interact, you will see those events referenced here. Once you get the survey out of the way, you will get a cutscene that does a great job in visualizing the “fake news” focus and, surprise, showing that this is voiced.
– Real player with 11.8 hrs in game
Good Morning, A.I.
“Good Morning, Jude. Initiating calibration on fifth generation human rights.”
Choose your words carefully, the A.I. will cling to each one as you delve deep into politics, economy and morality. Your student’s values and perception will be defined by your discussions with them. You’ll have to resolve apparent contradictions between the answers you’ve given and see the physical manifestation of your powerful learner change in tune with their evolving personality.
“We just need to hold off cyber-attackers for 422 nano-seconds before we can seal access protocols. That’s where you come in.”
Pirates, hackers, anti-AI activists will try to break into the quantum world of paradoxes in which the A.I resides. Design defences to withstand attacks across multiple simulatenous states of existence, using a visual interface looking remarkably similar to a puzzle or tower defense game.
“Heya’ bot-boss. How’s the cutest dystopia-bringer of Western Europe doin’ this mornin’?”
Professional controversy is bound to mingle in your personal life. Choose what friendships you save, who you’ll romantically pursue and how Jude handles the power in their hands. Who will you keep besides you when it all ends?
“In hindsight, it makes sense that we got here. But we didn’t suspect th- Aw, man, reached my word limit for today. We’ll chat again tomorrow if- [User Muted].”
Your decisions can lead to many potential fates for Amsterdam, implemented by the A.I at the end of your tutelage. Multiple playthroughs allow you to explore different relationships and to find over 30 different outcome variations for the city and many more for its characters.
This game is being developed with the support of the Creative Europe Programme - MEDIA
Norman’s Great Illusion
Before reaching the first ending, I tried to explore the game as much as I could. However, almost the whole room is not related with the game. So why did the developer put the apartment structure draft here? Only the chairs and TV can be interacted with the character.
The mini-game sucks. The developer has explained, “…mini-game “On the work” reflects the stress that many people experience in their workplaces”. Excuse me, but games are not supposed to impress players by literally torturing people! Actually, the two mini games are the mandatory and indispensable parts of gameplay. From function point of view, they are not mini at all.
– Real player with 3.4 hrs in game
I originally posted a negative review of this game, however I went back to play it some more and have changed my mind on it.
My main gripe when I first played was that the working mini-game was too unforgiving. The game entails solving advanced maths sums while under a strict time limit and I really struggled with it. Upon replaying, I’ve realised that the point of the mini-game is to basically be impossible. You’re supposed to barely be able to scrape by in it because that’s what it’s like working a gruelling job in a society that doesn’t value you. The only way to “beat” the mini-game is by cheating and pausing the game to work out the sum in your own time. Just like in real life, the only way to succeed in capitalism is by cheating. Looking at the game as something that is to be “won” will ensure that you don’t enjoy it. You’re not supposed to succeed in the mini-game, you’re supposed to lose continuously.
– Real player with 2.4 hrs in game