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 politically driven, first-person, narrative game set in 1980’s North-West England in which you play as a whistleblowing journalist.
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.
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 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...
Despite being held back by pesky bugs, The Occupation is nonetheless an enjoyable and immersive game that handles weighty subject matter with aplomb.
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...
Brilliantly conceived but sloppily executed, The Occupation’s potential as an immersive detective sim suffers from too many technical problems to recommend it.
The Occupation is a unique and intriguing investigative thriller, that is sadly ruined by a multitude of performance issues that see it never reach its full potential.
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.
You’ll be left out with a “meh” after finishing the game. What game did we just play?
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.
It’s rare, but sometimes I sit in front of this computer, and I experience the dreaded writer’s block. Usually reserved for the novelists and the screenwriters, the writer’s block a critic gets is a uniquely challenging obstacle. But regardless, I must try my very best to concisely explain The Occupation to you. How it’s a game that I love, and respect for its many quirks. How you the viewer may love its eccentricities. But how do I start talking on this game I adore, and the many thi...