The third and final episode of dystopian surveillance game Orwell: Ignorance Is Strength launched today, completing the follow-up to 2016’s Orwell: Keeping an Eye On You. As before, this series puts players in charge of an oppressive state’s wide-ranging surveillance software to pry into people’s lives, investigate them and their connections, and try to figure out what’s going on – and what you want the official record to say is going on. Ah, what the hey, I’m sure you’ll end up with your head in a box of rats either way, may as well try to do something nice for someone, yeah?

Our John reviewed the first episode and it all went downhill from him after rejecting the game’s premise:

“The silly takes the form of the Orwell system, a means of government spying where they give day-one recruits access to unimaginably powerful spying equipment (just knowing someone’s email address means you can immediately read their incoming and outgoing mail, for instance), but those same recruits have no access to Google. Your handler, meanwhile, isn’t allowed access to all these materials, but only the information you send her. The rationale that the first game used was something to do with prevention of invasions of privacy by government officials. Like I say, silly. As you try to find connections between people involved in potentially anti-government situations, you unearth websites and blogs and faux-Twitter accounts (‘Blabber’, here), but only by stumbling upon references to them in the previous item. It’s a bizarre and nonsensical way to go about investigating an individual, but not nearly as daft as the means by which you communicate your discoveries.”

It’s just a game; you should really just relax. But while John isn’t so keen on this, I’ve heard other people digging season 2. What say you, privacy-pryers?

Oh! If you don’t mind a little technonense in your surveillance, you might enjoy the short free puzzle game Photobomb. I’m still surprised no one has jacked that ace idea for a bigger game.

Orwell: Ignorance Is Strength is out now for Windows, Mac, and Linux. It costs £7.19/€9.99/$9.99 on Steam and GOG. That gets you the whole season.



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