Ministry of Broadcast

released on Jan 30, 2020

Ministry of Broadcast is a pixelart cinematic platformer which takes place in the dark dystopian TV reality show. The story is set in a country which has been divided by THE WALL. In order to cross to the other side of the border, the player must win in this TV show organized by the regime.


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Painful disappointment. With a promising narrative base, it struggles to be interesting in looks, story and especially the punishing platforming. It fails on all fronts, which lead to a quick quit.

Some really fun, kinetic action sequences and great art. The humor is strange and distracting though and I was often confused about what it was trying to say.

Wie sähe eine TV-Gameshow aus, die mit der Thematik von George Orwells Roman 1984 spielt und im Kalten Krieg angesiedelt ist?

Kombiniert wurde das alles mit einer Geschichte über ein armes, schuhloses Würstchen, das im Verlauf der Sendung unbewusst darauf trainiert wird, gefühllos Knöpfe zu drücken und Kisten zu schieben, egal wie viele sogenannte Zivilisten – also andere Teilnehmer – brutal dabei draufgehen. Eine für dieses ansonsten lustige Spiel ziemlich düstere Wandlung der Geschichte, aber auch sehr gut umgesetzt. Der Aspekt mit den Rollenzuweisungen und den Wachen erinnert mich an das Stanford-Prison-Experiment.

Empfehlung für Liebhaber feiner Pixelkunst und totalitärer Regime.

Achievements: 42 %

Was very surprised by how much I enjoyed this, a darkly comic spin on cinematic platformers. Some of the jokes don't land in the sort of try-hard way that games can get sometimes, but more often than not they're at least silly fun. Replaying sections to get the secret ending for finding enough collectibles was absolutely worth it for the resulting goof.

Of more recent games of this type, this definitely works the best for me. I was also surprised at how this helped me figure out what I don't particularly like about Playdead's output, namely that while they have good setpieces and decent enough puzzle solving, those worlds break apart for me as they progress, and I start to feel like I'm going through a barrage of haunted house attractions instead of a world, particularly in the case of Inside. Not that the premise of Ministry of Broadcast is bulletproof, but it certainly better accommodates those cohesion issues [and I think still just has a more consistently realized world anyway].