Osmotic Studios built a game about surveillance and then handed the player the joystick. Orwell: Keeping an Eye on You was released in 2016 and is available on Linux, Android, PC, iOS, Mac and Nintendo Switch. It is a simulator, an adventure and a visual novel at once, and its text-driven perspective means the player never leaves the desk.
The premise is the hook. Orwell is a new governmental security program with the power to survey the online presence of every person in The Nation. It monitors personal communications and accesses any computer. Human researchers sift what Orwell finds and decide which pieces go to the security forces and which get rejected.
You are Orwell’s first human researcher, chosen from thousands of candidates. When a terror attack hits the capital city of Bonton, Orwell and you are put to the test. Starting with a single person of interest, you help build a profile of a network of potential culprits.
Trailer, via GOG.
Are These People Really Terrorists?
The game’s central question arrives early and does not leave. Are these people really terrorists? What does the information you reveal say about them? What if you find things not even their loved ones know? What is the real price of the security the Nation yearns for?
Those questions are not decoration. They are the mechanics. Orwell: Keeping an Eye on You makes the player the instrument of surveillance, then asks the player to live with the instrument’s output.
The key features map cleanly onto that design. You investigate the digital lives of citizens, searching web pages and scouring social media posts, dating site profiles, news articles and blogs. You invade the private lives of suspects, listening in on chat communications, reading personal emails, hacking PCs and pulling medical files. You determine the relevance of information, because only what you provide reaches the security forces and gets acted upon.
The last feature is the sharpest. Secure the freedom of the Nation, it reads, so citizens can sleep safe knowing Orwell is watching over them. The phrasing is the joke and the thesis at once.
Chat Logs, Medical Files and Dating Profiles
The tools break down into a short list of verbs the player repeats:
- Search web pages and social media posts
- Scour dating site profiles, news articles and blogs
- Listen in on chat communications
- Read personal emails and hack PCs
- Pull medical files and make connections
None of these are abstract. Each one is a click, and each click is a decision about what someone else deserves to have known about them.
The mature content warning deserves a mention. Orwell: Keeping an Eye on You includes mature language at multiple points and mature themes, and the publisher states plainly it is not suitable for younger players. That is not a marketing line. The material the player handles — private messages, medical records, the debris of ordinary lives — is the reason the game works.
Inside the Researcher’s Desk
The game runs on a single loop, and it repeats for as long as the story lasts.
| Stage | What the researcher does |
|---|---|
| 1 | The researcher starts with a single person of interest |
| 2 | The researcher searches public posts and web pages |
| 3 | The researcher reads private emails and chat logs |
| 4 | The researcher hacks PCs and pulls medical files |
| 5 | The researcher marks information relevant or rejected |
| 6 | The researcher’s choices shape how suspects are perceived |
That order is the whole game. The player moves down the table, one suspect at a time, and the table never changes.
The structure is a text-driven visual novel, which sounds passive and is not. The perspective keeps the player inside the interface. You do not watch a character make a morally compromised choice. You make it, then you watch the consequences land on people you have spent hours reading about.
8.6 Out of 10
Orwell: Keeping an Eye on You earns its 8.6 out of 10. The score reflects a game that knows exactly what it is doing and does it without flinching. The mechanic and the message are the same object, which is rare and hard to pull off.
The weakness is that the game’s power depends on the player’s willingness to keep reading. Anyone who wants action will bounce off the text perspective fast. The interface is the point, and the interface is also the barrier.
What matters here is that Osmotic Studios did not soften the premise. The game does not let the player claim ignorance about what surveillance costs, because the player is the one who supplies the information. The terror attack in Bonton is the inciting incident, but the real subject is the researcher’s chair.
The mature language warning is honest, and so is the rest of it. Orwell: Keeping an Eye on You is a game about what you would do with other people’s private lives, and it makes you answer.
Get the Notebook.
The day's best stories and every fresh verdict, in plain English, in your inbox by seven. One email a day, no more.
