Beholder is inspired by dystopian works of George Orwell, Aldous Huxley, and Ray Bradbury. Carl is a government-installed landlord in a totalitarian state. The State appoints Carl to spy on the tenants. The player can bug apartments while tenants are away, search their belongings for whatever can threaten the authority of the State, and profile them. The State requires the player to report anyone capable of violating the law or plotting subversive activities. The game offers the player the choice of either following the commands of the Government or siding with the people who suffer from the oppressive directives. Each game character has their own personality, circumstances, and issues. Every decision that a player makes affects the way the story unfolds. The game has multiple endings, each of them being a sum of the decisions made by the player.
Development and release
Beholder was developed by the Russian team at Warm Lamp Games, located in Barnaul. The team was created based on the Barnaul division of Alawar Stargaze.The Work on the project began in October 2015.The Beholder prototype contained elements of the economic game, which were expressed in the fact that the residents of the house paid rent to the main character for housing, and the player had to improve his living conditions, but later it was decided to remove them, because the creators considered that the search component of the game in this way will go the way. On April 26, 2016, the game appeared on the Kickstarter crowdfunding platform, where developers collected $ 25,000 to fund the game's creation. During the company, this amount was never charged and the decision was made to close the funding before the deadline. The game was also introduced on Steam Greenlight and, on May 9, reached 10th place among the projects submitted for approval by the community. During game creation, developers focused on games like Papers, Please and This War of Mine, as well as the works of George Orwell and Aldous Huxley. On October 6, 2016, the Beholder demo appeared on the Steam store. The game for personal computers was launched on November 9, 2016. On May 17, 2017, the game was released for mobile devices on iOS and Android operating systems. On January 16 and 19, 2018, the Beholder was available on PlayStation 4 and Xbox One, respectively. On May 18, 2017, Steam released another downloadable content called Beholder: Blissful Sleep, in which the player has the opportunity to learn more about the game world and the residents of the house. According to the supplement's plot, the government issues a bill called "Blessed Dream", which exposes all citizens who have reached the age of 85 to euthanasia. The name of the house manager is Hector Medina - he is about 65 years old, but due to an error, Hector's age has been corrected to "85 years old". The player has a choice - to submit to fate and fall asleep with a "blessed dream" or to avoid euthanasia by various methods. Unlike the original, the protagonist has no family, with the exception of the cat and his 30-year-old son, who works on the construction of a railway to the north. In additional content, the player has the opportunity to discover the story of the residents of the house that the next manager, Karl Stein, will encounter.
Reception
Awards
Beholder has been nominated and won several conference awards:
Russian filmmakers Nikita Ordynskiy and Liliya Tkach released a live-action short film for Beholder, with Russian actor Evgeniy Stychkin playing the role of Carl. The film was released onto YouTube on February 1, 2019.
