Why Beholder questioned my morals.

So, back in late 2016, I played a game known as Beholder on a website called Big Fish Games. I was mostly playing hidden object games for an upcoming YouTube channel of my own, BubonicZombie.

The premise of Beholder is that you are a landlord for this property that is in a totalitarian state. The country is unknown, the state is unknown, but things are very bleak from the start and your family is put in charge. You move in with your wife and your daughter and there are rules that you have to adhere by. The rules at first seem simple enough as you navigate and meet the different clients or tenants that you're in charge of. But over time, you get different rules and regulations from the state that you must follow.

One of the rules that I remember was that there was no crying allowed. And I remember this because there's a period of time where your daughter gets sick and if you don't find a cure or find medicine or find a doctor for her she ends up dying. And of course your wife is very distraught and she cries every day and this is where the premise of the game comes to light. You have to balance your morals depending on if you want to keep your job or if you want to keep everybody happy.

One of the things that you start off with is that one of your tenants is made out to be an enemy of the state or a former spy for a different country and your job is to find evidence against him in order for him to be arrested. Now, you can confront your neighbor and warn them or you can sneak into their apartment and find evidence to turn into the authorities for them to be arrested.

On my very first playthrough I was definitely playing the good guy. I wanted to be everybody's friend I wanted to be compliant but at the same time I didn't want anyone getting in trouble. But you only get so much money from the state and things get very difficult if your daughter does not survive and one of the things that happens is that if your family dies from illness or what have you then you get put in jail for failing your family. Which is very cold hearted of a game to do, but that is the reality of the game.

But if you listen to the state if you listen to your higher ups or whoever is in charge of you then you can progress further into the game. The furthest I got before I had the end game or I had the ending that I got was two people moved in a man and his girlfriend and the man wanted to get rid of the girlfriend (he didn't like her anymore). One of the things that I did was find evidence that she was in fact breaking the law and of course to find evidence you have to sneak into the person's apartment.

So this game is definitely not for someone kind hearted or someone who's really soft hearted because it is a game that challenges you to make brutal decisions in order to save yourself, save your family, or save your tenants and a lot of times there's always someone who's going to lose and I realized very quickly that there's always going to be someone that loses and someone's always going to not be satisfied by the end.

As of writing this article, Beholder 2 is out and was released in 2018. Right now on Steam, you can get Beholder 2 on sale for $3 or pay full price for $18. The first Beholder is also on Steam for $2 on sale or full price for $14. I definitely suggest to take a look at this game for all of your choices matter and everything you do has consequences.