Developers: White Paper Games

Release Date: 5 March 2019

Website: occupation-game.com

The Occupation is a first-person, fixed time, investigative thriller sim set in 1980’s North-West England, in which you play as a whistleblowing journalist. It’s a narrative politically driven experience coming with stealth mechanics and environmental puzzles. A terrorist attack has left 23 dead and has become a catalyst for the creation of The Union Act. A controversial act which threatens the civil liberties of the British population.

The day is October 24th 1987. Action starts at 3:27 pm and the next 4 hours will determine the outcome of the act and the future of the country. Events happen in real-time and you must make decisions based on the evidence surrounding you. Is the cost of an extreme action outweighed by the cause of the greater good? You are the reporter. You decide the narrative.

The game takes place in a single government building, in real time over four hours; the game advances without input from the player, but almost all in-game actions can affect the game’s story. That’s remind me of old interactive drama masterpiece The Last Express by Jordan Mechner.

The game doesn’t have a health bar or energy system; when the game needs to punish the player it does so by using up the player’s time, for example if a player is caught doing something they shouldn’t, they are taken to a security office and lose 15 minutes of game time, which shortens the time available to achieve the main aim of the game, obtaining knowledge.

The game has been developed on Unreal 4. It uses dynamic artificial intelligence, which combines scripted activities for the in-game characters, along with deviations to their normal routine based on their in-game requirements or interactions.

The Occupation is developed by White Paper Games, well known for previous Myst-like title, Ether One, praised for beautiful scenarios. The Occupation seems to carrie the same attention for aesthetics; there is a bit of Bioshock Infinite in its colorful world!