In this grim dystopian future, where privacy is dead and a totalitarian State controls every aspect of life, you can still choose to cling to your humanity and empathize with others! But will you risk your life to save someone else? More importantly, what will you do if you must decide between your duty and your family? Welcome to our review of the dark dystopian management sim: Beholder.
Set in the year 1984 (I see what you did there), Carl and his family move into an old apartment building in a city loosely based on the old Iron Curtain states. You are to become the new landlord of the building, but with added tasks. To your tenants, you are a government-installed Landlord in a totalitarian State. However, that is simply a facade that hides your real mission: to covertly watch your tenants. You must bug their apartments while they’re away, search their belongings for anything that can threaten the authority of the State, profile them for your superiors and report anyone capable of violating the laws. Remember: You are just a cog in a totalitarian machine – a cog that has been given the power to destroy the privacy of any person. Will you pass this test of power?
Decisions in Beholder:
Yes, this game made me think. We live in a certain amount of freedom. We can buy games, read books, eat what we want, dress how we like without many problems. Of course there is the discussion about Zwarte Piet in the Netherlands, or the never ending discussions about religion, LBHQT-community etc. But we don’t have to worry about being controlled by the state. It felt wrong to snoop though the apartments of my tenants. I reported a guy for playing chess, since the state prohibited it.. he got arrested and his wife had to leave the country.
Beholder is full of these kind of questions. Answer the phone, get a job from the state, succeed and be rewarded. If you fail, you will be penalized, which can be a deduction of honor or even a solid game over. Most of the time you are collecting data. But what will you do with the information you collect? Will you report the suspicious activities of a father and orphan his children? Or will you withhold the details about his illegal activities and give him a chance to make things right? You may also choose to blackmail him to acquire the money your family desperately needs. Because you have kids who want to study, or play with toys.. and family is important.. no?
Gameplay:
The first time I fired up this game, I was like – I try to be a ‘good’ landlord, and do what they ask me. But I found out really fast that my tenants weren’t just tenants.. Each character you meet will have a thoroughly developed personality with his or her own past and present. This myriad of characters creates a unique labyrinth of relationships in which you must communicate with others and then decide what your next steps will be. Essentially, your relationships with others form a puzzle you must solve. If you evict the man from room #6, it could be you can’t get quest Y because his wife had a certain item you’ll need..
As the developers state, every choice has it’s consequence. You don’t know where you’ll end up: since Beholder is a game of multiple endings. Although you’ll always have enough information to make a wise decision, there will always be something about you which you might be unaware. Will you become the best landlord ever (but end up in some futuristic ending I won’t spoil), or will you go against the machine and start a revolution? It’s all up to you!
Switch-magic?
The game is not really optimized for the Nintendo Switch, since I spent a lot of time hassling with the button mapping to get the right items for example. Instead of talking to a tenant I walked towards a plant and investigated it (they were a few centimeters apart). The art style however is lovely and really fits the setting they are trying to create. Everyone is a black ‘blob’, which adds extra layers to the ‘1984’ setting. The only thing that surprised me, is that this game was developed in Russia.. not the most critic-friendly country, given the theme of the game.
Conclusion:
Beholder is a nice, deep and sometimes frustrating game. It adds multiple layers to a management simulator with a lot of different endings. Some of them are really similar, and feel more like a ‘we can add this one as well’ type of decision. Overall the game delivers what it promises, but won’t be a game for everyone.
