There's a lot to love about this game--it produces a sense of intrigue and drama very well and is tinged through-and-through with meaningful emotion and suspense. In all manner of ways this is a well-written game and it went far beyond my expectations in that regard. I was impressed by how it made the player engage in morally difficult and tenuous decisions, sometimes even spur-of-the-moment, and it frequently felt like the outcome of those decisions was tangible and changeable.
However, from a mechanical perspective this game really isn't as tight as it deserves to be and fails when compared to other deductive mystery and investigation games. There are two reasons as to this: the first is that the player is never really given the tools to piece together information meaningfully, instead having to scrap together specifically-provided information in a very guided method that felt too on-rails to really make my brain scratch; the second is that the player is not given the opportunity to piece together this information and build a meaningful picture by themselves. Every piece of information that the player feeds to Orwell is commented on by an in-game NPC, to the point where nearly everything is literal and you never get to fully digest or process information. This is very different to a game like Return of the Obra Dinn (which has visual information rather than prosaic), wherein the player is given the tools to keep track of information, make guesses or accusations based on well-founded data that is all collected by the player, and has a success state that is entirely determined by the player's intellect and skill at putting the pieces in place.
Despite this underwhelming design, Orwell still has a really well-written story and it made the political part of me feel very engaged and devoted to what was going on. I'm glad that we've seen more of these data-based games come out in the last several years, and I hope that somebody makes one that really relies on the player's involvement rather than spoon-feeding them everything they need.
However, from a mechanical perspective this game really isn't as tight as it deserves to be and fails when compared to other deductive mystery and investigation games. There are two reasons as to this: the first is that the player is never really given the tools to piece together information meaningfully, instead having to scrap together specifically-provided information in a very guided method that felt too on-rails to really make my brain scratch; the second is that the player is not given the opportunity to piece together this information and build a meaningful picture by themselves. Every piece of information that the player feeds to Orwell is commented on by an in-game NPC, to the point where nearly everything is literal and you never get to fully digest or process information. This is very different to a game like Return of the Obra Dinn (which has visual information rather than prosaic), wherein the player is given the tools to keep track of information, make guesses or accusations based on well-founded data that is all collected by the player, and has a success state that is entirely determined by the player's intellect and skill at putting the pieces in place.
Despite this underwhelming design, Orwell still has a really well-written story and it made the political part of me feel very engaged and devoted to what was going on. I'm glad that we've seen more of these data-based games come out in the last several years, and I hope that somebody makes one that really relies on the player's involvement rather than spoon-feeding them everything they need.