Beholder: Complete Edition

A good game that will make us think about our way of acting. A very good point and click for the Xbox catalog.

A dark and despotic management adventure, where errors often have undesired consequences we have to live with. Controls can be unintuitive and imprecise sometimes, and this brings on some frustration. Overall, though, it's a very interesting game for lovers of managerial titles.

A good management sim with an interesting style, but it may be a bit grim for some.

Overall I was very happy with the game, as I honestly wasn’t expecting a whole lot from a developer who I had never heard of. Curve Digital has been around since 2005 but when I looked through their roster of games, I recognized not a single one. So cheers to them for this release, I very much look forward to see what they put out next after this success.

Beholder houses a great deal of depth, even for a management sim. It’s an intriguing experience that will constantly toy with your moral compass, if indeed frustrating at times. This game isn’t particularly lengthy, but there’s a heap of replay value to be found within thanks to the procedurally generated scenarios and over ten different endings.

Beholder: Complete Edition is a wonderfully morally corrupt package that makes you feel stress, pity, loathing, and desperate to survive.

While the first hour is as im- as depressive (at times), the limitations of the mechanics slowly take over. The moral implications of each decision you make (or have to make) are clearly there and always impactful - up to the very end. But since it is always black or white with no grey areas whatsoever, the concept is reduced to trial and error.

It seems some additional work has gone into the translations and the game is better for it. Between those improvements and two intriguing plots worth following, this is certainly the definitive version of Beholder.

No honor ever inflicted on a Sim compares to this. Be brave and enter its dark world. [March 2018, p.78]

Beholder is an absolutely unique experience and made me feel all sorts of ways I didn’t necessarily want feel about a video game. It was both stressful, but rewarding. It made me think quickly and gauge priorities. It’s a game that makes you understand that not everybody is going to have a happy ending, and that it’s within your power to choose who goes to jail and who stays free. If you’re up for a challenge then I recommend you give this game a go. It may not be for everyone, I’m not even sure it’s for me, but you’ll never know the outcome of something unless you give it a shot.