From Papers Please to Aviary Attorney, I am a sucker for narrative games involving quick thinking and paperwork. When I stumbled across We. The Revolution at this year’s PAX West, then, I was keen to jump straight in. Afterward, I needed a good long sit down. Just as a heads-up for those who might find it upsetting, this article touches on topics such as sexual assault and religious persecution.
We. The Revolution (and its bizarrely placed full stop) is a game in which you play as a judge in one of the courts of Paris during the French Revolution. You preside over a series of cases, trying to serve justice and keep everybody happy in a roiling, oppressive and above all deadly atmosphere. There are around a hundred cases in the game and players can expect to tackle around 25 of them in a given playthrough. At the start of each case, you sift through the written evidence set on the desk before you, clicking on pertinent keywords as you go. Once you’ve gathered all the keywords, you start forging links between them – selecting two at a time. Successfully linking two keywords will unlock a new question to ask the defendant. Get it wrong, however, and you might end up losing a keyword altogether, limiting the number of questions you can unlock during that case.
The questions you gather are then asked of the defendant, with the answers determining the opinions of the jury and the public watching the case, as well as the overall mood of the courtroom. Let them get too riled up, for example, and things may start happening that are beyond your control.
Source: Eurogamer We. The Revolution is a horribly queasy game about life and death