Beholder Review – “Oppressive Surveillance”

Developer: Warm Lamp Games
Publisher: Alawar Entertainment
Reviewed on: PC, Mac
Code received

Landlords have many responsibilities. You have to maintain the building you preside over. You must ensure your tenants pay their rent on time, and behave in accordance with their renter’s agreement. And you have to install video cameras inside of all the smoke detectors in the apartments you lease. If you don’t do all of these things the Ministry will come knocking, drag you off prison, and sentence your family to death.

Beholder takes place in a world where every citizen is monitored, documented, and judged. It’s your job as Carl Stein, the landlord of a crumby apartment complex, to do the monitoring and documenting. Through a variety of tasks, and in accordance with Government Directives, you must report your findings to The Ministry so “order can be maintained”. From your perspective, your hands are tied. You must follow your orders and make do with what little wiggle room you have, because in Beholder even the watchers are being watched.

Gameplay

Beholder has a simple 2D interface that lets you survey the entire apartment complex at a glance. You click on items and people to interact with them. Sometimes the interface isn’t as responsive as it needs to be. For instance, doors are very thin and difficult to click on in a hurry. Also, Carl doesn’t always react to your clicks right away, so this can lead to being caught when rummaging through someone’s apartment.

When investigating a person you have to manually search through their belongings and spy on them with hidden cameras to create a “Profile” of that tenant. Over time, the government will issue Directives that make possessing certain items and performing particular actions illegal. If a tenant you’ve profiled starts doing something illegal, you then have to report them to the Ministry. They will then be dragged off to jail, and you will be rewarded with money and reputation. You spend these currencies to acquire items you and your family need to survive, and to convince people to help you.

The main path through Beholder has you investigating certain people in accordance with Ministry orders in a very limited time frame. I failed a few tasks mere minutes away from completing them because certain opportunities arose too late. The time limits felt overly restrictive and overwhelming when you had several tasks to complete at the same time. They also led to a few frustrating failures that were out of my control.

Ultimately, you have to straddle the line between helping your tenants and spying on them. You will have to make decisions that are technically illegal, but have to be made in order to get the job done. Balancing these things can be difficult and often times will lead to your capture and execution, which ends the game. Beholder is a game about risk vs. reward, and you will inevitably make mistakes your first time through.

Graphics & Sound

Beholder paints a very bleak, grimy picture of peasants living in a totalitarian dictatorship. Everything is gray and broken. Characters models are black shapes with piercing white eyes. While simple, every one has some distinguishing feature. Some are tall and lanky, others walk with a cane. It’s hauntingly effective because all the characters have a personality, despite looking affectless. The game intentionally makes you feel awkward spying on your neighbors because it gives you an usual point of viewing, allowing you to see almost everything they do.

The story is bookended by short animated sequences that either set up the story or show the grim fate of Carl and his family. They are well produced and do a great job of adapting the game’s graphical style to different dimensions.

Sound effects are minimal and music serves as background noise. The bus that drops people off periodically is probably the most distinct sound effect. If you are searching a tenant’s apartment, the bus will alert you to the possibility of them returning and catching you in their home. It’s a shame there aren’t more audio cues like this.

Performance

I didn’t experience any technical issues while playing Beholder. It ran well on both my Windows 10 PC and my mid-2012 MacBoook Pro (see specs below).

Conclusion

Beholder is an atmospheric story about the uneasy pressure of spying on your neighbors for the government. You know it’s wrong, but you really have no choice, so you make the best of it. It’s a story ripped straight from Orwellian fiction, and one that would have been more effective if the gameplay was more engaging. The time limits don’t allow the best parts of Beholder to breathe, and over time it felt like I was just going through motions without much thought. Beholder leaves a good first impression, but your long-term enjoyment will depend on whether you can overlook the imprecise controls and mundane tasks.