10 computer games about protest, prisons and free media

OTD-Info talks about ten computer games about protests, repressions, police and authoritarianism.

Disrupt

Street protest arcade simulator (English)

In the spring of 2017, Resistjam was held - during the week activists and creators of games from around the world talked and developed games that criticize authoritarianism and power structures. As a result, it turned out 211 games - everything can be downloaded for Friciprais or launched in a browser at the link . Disrupt is one of them.

Here you can simply move endlessly in a street crowd, and no revolution will happen. If you start interacting with others, there will be a chance of changes. This is true both for the world of people from flesh and blood, and for multi -colored pixel men in Disrupt. This will not take you much time. Only seven or eight objects for interaction - and in ten minutes you are already at the final police cordon. With each of your choice - peaceful or calling for active resistance - riot police, running along the screen towards, will become more and more. Detention is Game Over. Above you hangs a strip that you can fill in either blue or red. These are the colors of two options for victory: either you sing “Police with the people!”, Or chant “Acab”. Choose yourself.

Developer: Solluxx

Attention! Steam has a game with the same name about hackers. Do not confuse. You can download Disrupt for Fricipers here

This is police

The story of the difficult life of Chief Politsi and

The game about the police chief Jack Boyd is made in the spirit of classic noir films of the 50s. The city of Friburg, revealing its secrets to the measured piano and dynamic jazz, is full of contradictions. Two mafia groups are ready to start a war. Each of them wants to enlist the support of Boyd. But even without the mafia, lawlessness is enough on the streets - fights, murders, robberies and shootings. Feminists prepare a demonstration. The mayor wants her to be harshly dispersed. If this is not done, the police will cut the budget. And if you do it, newspapers, public opinion and the prosecutor’s office will vice the throat of Jack Boyd.

Boyd left 180 days, then the authorities - with relief - will be thrown out to retire. The unequal copper is pretty tired of them. What do Jack Boyd yourself need? Earn money for a comfortable old age. Return the wife who left him. Do not give the reason for the mafia to get rid of the chief of the police before he retires.

In general, you are a member of this club for another six months. Lead the finances of the police station, beg from the mayor to strengthen special forces or additional employees. Hire patrol and detectives - the former will deal with operational challenges, the latter will unravel criminal cases more complicated. Want to be friends with the criminal world? You will have many opportunities to show your ability to conduct a dialogue. True, you can be handed over to the police, with the hands of which you made dark deeds. Threaten them. Buy. Carry out heroic operations to save hostages. Help the old women. Cut the nonsense from the bastards in the streets. The main thing in your business is to maneuver. After all this is police.

Developer: Weappy Studios (Belarus)

Publisher: ThQ Nordic

Price in the Steam store 349 rubles

Replica

Interactive thriller about loyalty to the regime

What words are you usually looking for in search engines? Is there a “uprising” or “revolution” among them? This may indicate the degree of your loyalty to the democratic government. Or disloyalty.

Tom and Dicky study in high school. Dicky, apparently, contacted the wrong people. The Ministry of National Security suspects him of terrorism. Both - both Tom and Dicky - find themselves in the dungeons of special services. But Tom has a chance to avoid accusations. If he finds the Wildness of Providence of guilt in the phone. What could it be? For example, mentioning illegal demonstrations. Or interest in the history of the communist movement. Or correspondence about suspicious things with your girlfriend. Or the use of prohibited software. If Tom wants peace and freedom for himself and his loved ones, he will have to prove Dick's involvement in terrorist activities.

Developer: SOMU

Publisher: Zero Rock Entertainment

Price in the Steam store 79 rubles

The Westport Independent

Media censorship game (English)

After the end of the war, a party of loyalists came to power. Hard times require harsh measures - the media should be true to the state. Freedom of speech will wait until all the rebels, troublemakers and oppositionists will not be destroyed.

In The Westport Independent, you are dealing with papers - with a whole federal newspaper, to be more precise. After 12 weeks, the government plans to completely subjugate the entire press to itself. As the editor -in -chief, you determine what to let into the room and what is not. Literally: delete sentences from the finished note, if you consider it necessary. Some authors of articles will be outraged by censorship depending on their political views.

Be sure - the rebels and authorized members of the government will read your newspaper. Therefore, carefully observe. You can make one of the parties to the conflict look better than it is. You need to take into account the identities of your correspondents, as well as a socio-economic situation in four areas where your newspaper will spread.

Developer: Double Zero One Zero

Publisher: Coffee Stain Publishing

The price in the Steam 133 stores.

The price of a mobile application in the GooglePlay store 75 rubles

Wake Up

Minimalistic novel about victory over authoritarianism (English)

This game is optimistic. Here, minimalism is stronger than authoritarianism. With the help of buttons, the simplest voice acting and your imagination, you first go to work, where you work for the benefit of a “glorified regime”. Day after day. And then different thoughts begin to arise in your head: “fatigue”, “hatred”, “resistance”. You refuse to work. You are for the first time being detained. The girl throws you. Ahead is an attack on the house of titles, personal crisis, rethinking, overcoming, aspiration - and victory. You just have to press a couple of dozen buttons.

Developer: Inverge Studios

Starts in the browser here (participant Resistjam )

The Protester

Game of protests in Romania (English)

In January 2017, Romania was stirred up by thousands of protest. The reason was the report that the government was going to have mercy on members of the ruling Social Democratic Party convicted of corruption crimes. In addition, the authorities wanted to reformulate the concept of “excess of powers” ​​and decriminalize several articles of the Criminal Code, allegedly due to the overflow of prisons. However, the society considered these arguments only by cover to facilitate the fate of corrupt officials from among the Social Democrats. By the beginning of February, 100-120 thousand people were rallyed in Bucharest, about 140 thousand throughout the country.

In The Protester, you can influence the outcome of the protests. The most important resource is time. Every day you have only 12 hours. Time can be spent in three ways: on the search for information and useful contacts on the Internet, on social networks and on a street protest. Your actions affect both your personal influence and fame (scale on the left) and the overall protest potential (blue-red scale from above). Aggression, fights and the spread of rumors will cause rejection to you and all the protesters in general. The same thing - with a like or a rash of information that is useful to the government. But the interview, clapping their hands, peppy speech and the spread of the position of protesters will increase their (and your) quotes.

It is curious that you can take a lot of things to the street with you: from the mask of Guy Fox or the imperial attack aircraft to the machete, the cocktail of Molotov and the pirate hat. It is not clear whether this changes the formula for calculating points. At least you can make more fun.

Developer: victory.square
Starts in the browser here (participant Resistjam )

Orwell

Privacy game in the digital era

Big Brother is watching you. Although you are a big brother.

The game raises the eternal problem of balance and freedom balance: you play for the operator of the new government program "Orwell", which is designed to protect society from all threats at once. At the moment - from terrorists and other marginal elements. "Orwell" gives you any private information about people who fell into the field of view of the authorities. That is really everything: accounts on social networks, sites, blogs, personal messages, medical files on computers, chats, letters. The program gives you technical access, but to analyze and evaluate information is your task. Be prepared for the fact that a tangle of relationships that you will unleash during the investigation may captivate and ultimately confuse you.

Developer: Osmotic Studios

Publisher: Fellow Traveller

Price in the Steam store 259 rubles

Headliner: Novinews

Game about the influence of the media on society and your life (English)

Visually, perhaps Headliner: Novinews is inferior to the design of the same The Westport Independent, but in terms of the gameplay, this game is no worse. And in terms of the plot, maybe even more diverse and deeper. Here you also control the federal media and decide what to talk about, but what not. In addition, in your hands the fate of three characters with whom you can tinker with. But the main thing, of course, is news and how they change the world. Public opinion in your hands. Is it somewhat invented to report to citizens that hysteria around the genetic epidemic is somewhat invented? Is it to publish the news about the increased activity of government agents? Remember that after making decisions you have to go outside and see the consequences with your own eyes. Control The News, Control The Truth.

Developer: Unbound Creations

Publisher: UnBound Creations

Price in the Steam store 259 rubles

Beholder

Simal Simulator

Karl Shtein and his family live in a kind of beautiful country in which one of the countries of the Soviet bloc can be recognized - this could be Germany from the Stasi or the USSR with the KGB. Karl receives a new purpose, now he is a manager of a revenue house and at the same time a informer. He rents apartments to the guests and must peep behind them in the keyhole, delve into their things in order to convey about any deviation and offense. Or you can not convey by receiving an acceptable remuneration from the guests for this.

This is a familiar story about a small bipod. You have a choice: can I do immoral or dubious acts in the name of my family? In order to cure a sick daughter? In order to provide his wife and son? Is there a border of permissible in this case?

Beholder all the time puts you in hard time. We didn’t think in advance and did not buy a smuggler in advance for the quest? The quest will be littered, and you will not receive money. Then you will have to blackmail the guests. Having paid you, people will lose their savings and will be forced to move out of the number and disappeared forever. The visual style contributes to the internal emotional response: the warm yellow light of the lamps illuminates the dark rooms, the characters are painted with black silhouettes with large expressive eyes. What is happening is easy to take for a sad anti -utopian cartoon.

Developer: Warm Lamp Games

Publisher: Alawar Premium

Price in the Steam store 239 rubles

Prison Architect

Strategy about the construction and maintenance of prison

Let's destroy this prison, there should not be these walls here ... Well, to destroy the prison, you must first build it, right?

This indie jita has two modes of the game. The first, canonical - you go out in a clean field and begin to build an American type prison. It should have everything that is necessary: ​​cameras, perimeter of security, forbidden zones, dining room, courtyard, generators, arsenal and administrative premises. And much more. You are limited in funds, so you are free to choose how to earn them. If the prisoners are released conventionally and do not fall back, you get a good bonus. But first, you need to spend good money on creating comfortable conditions at your facility, because the prisoner needs to at least live to the parole. If you want - make small compact comfortable prisons, you want - giant anthills for 500 prisoners with a whole guard regiment. You can collect a panopticon for prisoners with the characteristics of mental development, you can - just a residence of hell for those who have come here to serve their term. After all, dead prisoners will definitely not become recidivists.

Each prisoner has its own goals and aspirations. Someone, perhaps, is already digging a tunnel to freedom, hiding it behind a poster with Rita Hayvort. Someone plans to kill a boring guard, and his neighbor is waiting for smuggling alcohol from the will. You are here to know all this, predict and suppress. Or provoke - to eliminate especially dangerous prisoners.

The second Prison Architect mode is called “Escape”. They built a terrible prison, about which the convicts poison stories on shipments - now go into the skin of the prisoner and try to escape from there. Or try to escape from the level made by another player. How? Look for weaknesses in the system. Organize mass riots, take possession of weapons, start a massacre in the prison courtyard. And remember - there are no two identical prisons, each prison is peculiar. At least in the world of this game.

Developer: Introversion Software

Publisher: Introversion Software

Price in the Steam store 515 rubles