16.4.2018. Game #33


I didn’t just enjoy Beholder, I was obsessed with this game, in fact, obsessed is putting it mildly. As soon as I learned how to play the game I was infected. I couldn’t stop playing it. I played it till 4 am (I know that’s probably not so hardcore, but for me it’s quite late) for 3 days and whenever I wasn’t playing it I thought of playing it. I even dreamt of this game. I beat the game about 10 times, played it for 30 hours and got all the achievements and EVEN THAT WASN’T ENOUGH FOR ME, so I bought the DLC played it for another 10 hours (all achievements too) and only now am I finally satisfied.


So what is this game about? What can possibly a small indie game have to make me spend so much time on it?
Beholder is a game about spying, manipulating, sabotaging, occasionally helping and hurting other people and yet, the main character isn’t even able to fight.

Beholder is set in a fictional dystopian world inspired by the depressive lifestyle of many European countries during World War 2. War is raging and communism is at large. You play as Carl Stein, a family man. All you want is to provide for and protect your family in this cruel world. You get selected as a very special job. The party selects you to become the new landlord of a 3 story building and spy on its residents. In order to be more effective in your work, you are injected with a drug which makes it impossible for you to go to sleep thus making you work non-stop. The job is difficult and slimy but the pay is good, however, a lot can go wrong and the party really doesn’t like it when something goes wrong.


You play the game with an overview of the entire house. You can zoom in on each individual room to get a better look but it becomes obvious very soon that you should played with a view of the entire building. You walk around and interact with your environment by clicking on places where you want to go, the items you want to examine and the people you wish to speak with.

Your main goal is to spy on your tenants, record their habits and report them if they do something forbidden. Each day a new law is passed which prohibits something. At first it starts with simple things like Apples or foreign currency but as the game progresses the party starts banning things like reading, crying and *gasp* imported drinks and rubber ducks.


You can spy on your tenants in three different ways. The first one, and the least useful one, is to spy on your neighbors through a keyhole like a voyeur. This can only show you what your tenants are doing at that moment and it gives you a very limited field of view.

The second method is by installing hidden cameras in each tenant’s room. With cameras you can see everything see everything provided it’s in the camera’s angle. You have three types of cameras: the narrow angled one, the wider angled one and the widest angled one. Even if you aren’t in front of your monitors and are doing something completely random, the cameras can show you everything your tenants are doing while in their rooms. The catch is, you start the game with only two cameras in the basement and the only way to get more cameras is to earn them through your reputation which brings us to the most effective way to spy on your tenants.


You may think that once a tenant exits the room that there is no more point in watching that room. Wrong, it’s actually the complete opposite. Once a tenant’s room is empty it’s time to strike. As the landlord you have the keys to everyone’s room and once they leave, you enter. Search their closets, flip over their beds, raid their drawers, do whatever you want as long as you find out things about your tenants. While cameras can show you weather or not your tenants drink, smoke or have trouble sleeping, raiding your tenants rooms can show you some juicier things such as: illegal contraband, weapons, sensitive documents and so much more. This is where the game truly shines in my opinion. It is so exciting to patiently wait for a tenant to leave their room only to make your move and find out things about them.

Once you have enough dirt on your tenants, you go back to your computer and profile the people living in your building. Pretty much immediately during your spying you will find some dirty secrets about your tenants. Once you discover a violation, you write a report and once the report is sent, almost immediately, a police car arrives and arrests the violator (provided you filled out the report well).


As fun as it is to write reports about your tenants and see them beaten and taken away, it is rarely the ideal and the more profitable solution. Yes, reporting tenants for their transgressions is what you are supposed to do but it only brings so much money and pretty soon your family will start having problems that require a lot of money to be solved. So much money is needed to keep your family safe and alive that it’s very unlikely you will be able to do it in your first play through. Once you realize that you have to do more than just your job, the game starts to get even better.


You see someone doing something wrong? Don’t report them, blackmail them. Don’t have anything to blackmail your tenants with? Break into their room, put some illegal contraband in one of their drawers and then blackmail them. It’s so evil and I am really questioning my morals after doing this for so long.


Of course, you don’t always have to be an evil big brother. Each tenant has their own story and their own quest and you can help them or profit off them. Helping people rarely earns you money but it earns you respect which you need to buy cameras and to persuade people.

The tenants aren’t the only ones who will give you quests. The Ministry will often call you and order you to do various tasks. Officially, you are working for the party and for the ministry but if you think their methods are questionable (and you should) you can always do quests for the resistance.


Overall, Beholder is a game about very tough choices and huge consequences. You can try to play it as a great landlord but eventually you will have to do something scummy, or you can go all out, like I did, and blackmail and exploit everyone you see.

The graphics are very simple. The two-dimensional house and its tenants are dark and gloomy and just like the game itself, brings a sense of depression. The tenants themselves are dark silhouettes with white eyes making them all look incredibly creepy. The dark eerie music only adds to the depression and fear factor.


Maybe it’s the spying and data collecting I liked so much or maybe it was just the sense of sheer power I felt as I watched my tenants doing their daily routines, unaware that someone was watching them. Whatever the case, this game came out of nowhere, sank it’s claws into my chest and is now one of my favorite games of all time.

Next game: Bejeweled 3
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