Spying on your neighbours and rummaging through their belongings has never been as fun and stressful as it is in Beholder: Complete Edition. The game has some minor blemishes when it comes to tasks and time limits, but the Complete Edition of Beholder is still an incredibly unique and enjoyable totalitarian experience.
Beholder: Complete Edition
Developer: Warm Lamp Games
Price: $14.99
Platforms: PS4, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch (reviewed), and PC
MonsterVine was provided with a Switch code for review
When I got an e-mail for Beholder, it was pitched as a totalitarian surveillance simulator; a peculiar sentence to say the least. The description intrigued me, and I’m glad it did, because despite the game’s occasional flaws, Beholder: Complete Edition is an incredibly unique game that made me feel elated, depressed, excited, and stressed all in equal measure.
In the base game of Beholder you play as Carl, the new building manager for an apartment building smack-dab in the middle of your average totalitarian nation. Carl, his wife, and his two kids arrive at their new apartment just in time to see the previous building manager be beaten and dragged away to be euthanized, which sets the tone for the rest of Beholder quite well. That soon-to-be-euthanized old fogey could be you at any given time, unless you’re either incredibly obedient, or incredibly sneaky.
See, Carl isn’t just a landlord; he’s also a surveillance agent whose primary job is to watch all the apartment’s tenants to ensure that no citizens are getting any non-patriotic ideas. As Carl, you’ll have to sneak into apartments while their denizens aren’t home to rummage through their belongings and to install security cameras, which is every bit as skeevy as it sounds. At the same time, Carl has to take calls from “The Ministry”, which often task him with jobs like housing corrupt government workers or framing citizens for crimes. There’s a thick layer of moral grime that you’ll constantly be wading through as you play Beholder, which is one of the game’s best features.
“Beholder left me feeling stretched far too thin at all times, which is exactly what I wanted from it.“
If that wasn’t enough for you to handle, each tenant has their own lives and requests that you’ll have to try to fulfill, as does your loving family. Messing these tasks up or taking too long to complete them can lead to some unfortunate outcomes. In my first playthrough, my daughter died of an illness because I couldn’t raise money for her surgery in time, while another tenant lost their entire family as a result of my meddling, leading to them holding an intense (homicidal) grudge against me. Beholder left me feeling stretched far too thin at all times, which is exactly what I wanted from it.
Monitoring tenants is made even creepier when you consider that the main method of earning money (a much-needed commodity) comes from giving reports on each neighbour’s activities and personalities. If you see a neighbour drinking wine, you can make note of it and tell the Ministry that he or she is a drinker. If you find a fishing rod or cookbook in someone’s dresser, you can tell the Ministry that this person enjoys fishing and cooking. As seemingly harmless activities and possessions become outlawed, these tiny details can be used to blackmail or report your neighbours to earn money, making you feel like a complete monster (unless the neighbour is a jerk, then it feels immensely satisfying). I really enjoyed the conflicting feeling of excitement and guilt that reporting on these neighbours gave me, especially as I got to know them, as I would have to decide if I was really okay with sending this old man to prison because he owned a pair of jeans. Some of these questlines are pretty vague though, not detailing exactly what type of item you need, or who you may need to talk to. If there were better hints to point you in the right direction, I wouldn’t necessarily mind, but I often found myself stumbling around and talking to everybody repeatedly just to figure out my next move now and then.
“It can be difficult to see the difference between layers though, leading to you getting stuck behind furniture or the door as you try to run out of the room to escape the approaching tenant.“
Going through each character’s belongings while they’re at work or in the basement can be an incredibly nerve-wracking experience, made frustrating when you can’t escape because of the vague difference between the foreground and background. See, you can go forward or backward on the apartment’s 2D plane in order to go through drawers and furniture in the background or foreground of the apartment. It can be difficult to see the difference between layers though, leading to you getting stuck behind furniture or the door as you try to run out of the room to escape the approaching tenant. These little mistakes can mean the difference between failing a mission or succeeding in it, which is stressful in a way that isn’t beneficial to the game.
Included in the Complete Edition is Blissful Sleep, an additional story mode that features some minor gameplay differences and a new story that focuses on the poor old business manager from the beginning of Beholder. In accordance with the titular “Blissful Sleep” program, building manager Hector is to be euthanized within a few days because he turned 85 (even though he actually didn’t, but the government is always right so oh well). Hector has to continue to be a good surveillance agent throughout his final days while helping the tenants of his apartment block, some of whom you’ll recognize from the base game. Now Hector’s fate isn’t a spoiler, because there’s an optional questline that revolves around Hector escaping the “Blissful Sleep” protocol, but the constantly approaching default fate that awaits Hector still serves as an intense reminder of how much you have to do in such little time.
My issue with Blissful Sleep comes from its abundance of instances where nothing happens. If you mess up a few questlines, you have almost nothing to do for long stretches of time. Though you can fast forward time, it would sometimes feel like you’re just waiting for Hector to get shipped off, as there was nothing to do in the meantime. I wish there were more missions or activities to partake in throughout Blissful Sleep, but overall, it’s still a great extra story that works perfectly alongside the base game.
The Final Word
Beholder: Complete Edition is as fun as it is stressful, and that’s a good thing. Some minor gameplay bumps and vague quest details are present, but Beholder Complete Edition is still a unique and full product that I’d recommend to anyone who wants to have fun facing moral quandaries while being incredibly stressed out.
MonsterVine Review Score: 4 out of 5 – Good
