Rating
The Occupation
The game takes place in a single government building, in real time over four hours, the game advances without input from the player, but almost all in-game actions can affect the game's story. The game is set in late 1987 within the same universe as White Paper Games' first title Ether One. The game doesn't have a health bar or energy system, whe...
Details
- Released
- March 4, 2019
- Developer
- White Paper Games
- Publisher
- Humble Bundle
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The Occupation Reviews
Professional reviews from gaming critics
The Occupation is a taut investigative simulation and stealth thriller. It’s infused with a realistic and multidimensional approach to mechanics, systems, and level design. This is a must-play for fans of Deus Ex and Dishonored.
There’s a lot to love with The Occupation. It’s got humanity, tension, and plenty of little touches that make finding that extra bit of information exciting without the usual violence you’ve come to expect from stealth games. However, its focus on no manual saving and real-time gameplay will be a dealbreaker. It’s not for everyone, but anyone craving consequence and narrative in their stealth game will find a challenge worth facing.
The Occupation just seems to work against itself in a finale where unfamiliarity with the surroundings, the necessary puzzle solving, and a constant threat of danger leads you to an ending that feels like something you fell into instead of worked towards. Replaying saves some of the initial frustrations, as you are armed with the knowledge you didn't have the first time, but still requires you to deal with a ball and chain in the form of stealth. Exploring areas you shouldn't be in, unraveling the true motivations behind lies and put on faces, piecing together clues for the big break, and conf...
Developed by a small studio, White Paper Games, The Occupation is a first person exploration thriller that dances with nuance and refuses to hold your hand through its time-limited narrative. While the overall style of both setting and gameplay is incredibly niche, The Occupation is a title that has its feet firmly planted on the ground, even if you spend half of your time crawling through vents and underneath floorboards.
The Occupation tells the story of a bombing that occurred in the fictional town of Turing. Can you beat the ticking clock and uncover the truth of what really happened? Or will you run out of time? Read our The Occupation review.
The Occupation is a game of intriguing ideas and sublime atmosphere; the tension of its real-time thrills gives way to a romance with journalistic sleuthing.
A sometimes brilliant but noticeably buggy immersive sim about investigative journalism.
You’ve got to give British developer White Paper Games credit. The studio made its debut with Ether One, a first-person puzzler depicting the difficult subject of dementia, but now it’s back with a 1980s-themed political thriller examining the thorny subject of immigration. Releasing against a modern day backdrop of Brexit, it’s the kind of boldness that this industry rarely ever sees.
There’s some irony to the fact that in its effort to design a game to be played against a ticking clock, the developer of The Occupation seemingly ran out of time. There’s a compelling narrative here, and some wonderful performances from the voice cast, but an experience that had the potential to put me on the edge of my seat more often than not made me want to start throwing chairs. Through post-release patching The Occupation may yet be resurrected as a very good stealth-investigation experience, but at launch this innovative game about making the most of time is itself an opportunity missed...
The Occupation has a premise that is really intriguing in theory. Trying to spy on a powerful entity and taking them to task with your questioning is the kind of experience that can be great in the game, and taking inspiration from current affairs makes it feel much more authentic. It's a shame that various bugs, even when updated to the most recent build, can make the experience feel lacklustre, and at times a frustration to play.
An explosion in the IPA building has taken the lives of 23 people and it's up to you to uncover who was involved and what happened.
The best bit of The Occupation is creeping around and scrabbling through paperwork, and that bit is bloody brilliant. Can someone make a game that’s just that conducted in different shady corporate offices, and without the bugs or a tired political story? The nicest layer of the flawed lasagne: being a sneakfuck and listening to voicemails that don’t belong to you. And then, presumably, getting a chat show in America and a job on morning TV.