Republique – 1984
I’ve written this entire list so far without saying the word “Orwellian,” which I tend to do repeatedly when discussing video game dystopias. There’s good reason for that, of course: George Orwell practically fathered the dystopian literature genre. His classic novel Nineteen Eighty-Four details a society controlled by government surveillance and propaganda where individualism is persecuted. So famous is it, in fact, that much of the book’s lingo —thoughtcrime, doublethink, newspeak, big brother— are familiar terms entered into common usage when referring to any form of information-control or oppressive government. It’s also required reading for any dystopian video game. Perhaps most obviously, Republique.
Originally an episodic mobile game from Camouflaj, Republique was born out of developer Ryan Payton’s desire to “stop complaining about the lack of real games on mobile and start making one.” It later came to console, of course, but the themes of surveillance within the game were rather cleverly woven into the gameplay of the original the mobile version. The player actually controlled movement by instructing its protagonist to move around via the surveillance cameras. And you were, of course, holding a surveillance device in the palm of your own hand as you played.
For fans of Orwell’s seminal novel, Republique’s announcement understandably had them excited. It looks like the ultimate totalitarian state, led by a sinister “Overseer,” with a population totally censored from the outside world, living in perpetual paranoia and brainwashed by the crazy ideology of their dictator. No surprises, Nineteen Eighty-Four was the game’s biggest influence, with Payton admitting the development team was “obsessed with dystopian societies” and were wanting to design a game about contemporary societies real-life movement “into this world that Orwell described and warned us about.
If you haven’t played Republique and you’re a fan of dystopian fiction, I highly recommend you do so. The gameplay isn’t especially exciting, and the movement often clunky, but the Metroidvania-like exploration and the incredible detail of the underground facility known as Metamorphosis, which houses the Overseer’s “utopia” is absolutely worth experiencing.
