The Watcher turns spying on your neighbours into an unsettling surveillance simulator

It is often said that you never really know what goes on behind closed doors, but upcoming psychological thriller The Watcher is going to give you all the equipment you need to find out.

The gradual morphing from a free world into a surveillance state is one I find confusing, to be honest. On the one hand, I don’t think the Chinese government are spying on me through my “smart” washing machine. But I am inherently suspicious of the number of cameras going up everywhere in our own towns and cities. It’s all for our safety, of course. What else would it be for?

The debut game from indie developer Yesterday’s Sandwich, The Watcher is an Unreal Engine 5 surveillance simulator that puts players behind the binoculars in the totalitarian state of Nodia, although in many ways it’s not hugely distant from what we are experiencing in the United States or United Kingdom.

More specifically, you are an unnamed observer stationed across the street from an apartment building in the mysterious city of Z. Your job is to monitor its residents, record any unusual behaviour and decide which of your discoveries should be reported.

Naturally, it is not quite that simple. As your investigation develops, the suspicion begins to creep in that you might not be the only person watching.

Big Brother is watching – and so are you

Players will build and gradually upgrade their own surveillance room with an assortment of equipment. From here, you can photograph residents, record video, intercept conversations and clean up audio in the hope of uncovering something useful.

Everything you collect can be pinned to an expanding evidence board alongside newspaper clippings and dossiers. Connecting these pieces of information may help reveal the truth, although the developer warns that gathering more evidence will not necessarily make events any clearer.

You will also need to decide what gets passed along to the authorities and how it is reported. These decisions have consequences for the people living across the street, potentially changing their fates as the story unfolds.

There appears to be a whiff of Papers, Please and Orwell about the whole thing, although The Watcher swaps border checkpoints and desktop surveillance for something resembling a particularly sinister Rear Window.

The game will repeatedly ask whether the things you have seen and heard can be trusted. Remaining hidden is equally important because, in a city where everybody may be under observation, attracting attention to yourself could prove fatal.

The Watcher features

• Monitor the windows across the street and identify changes in residents’ behaviour.
• Build and upgrade a personalised surveillance room.
• Capture photographs and video while keeping the collected data secure.
• Intercept conversations and clean up audio recordings.
• Connect photographs, recordings, clippings and dossiers on an evidence board.
• Choose what to report and determine the fate of the building’s residents.
• Question whether the information you uncover is real or misleading.
• Remain undetected while carrying out your investigation.

The Watcher is currently in development for PC and can be wishlisted on Steam. Yesterday’s Sandwich has not yet announced a release date.

It’s an interesting premise, nd one we need to take a lot more seriously.

The post The Watcher turns spying on your neighbours into an unsettling surveillance simulator appeared first on The Escapist.