Indie projects very often raise important issues for society. Small company Atomic wolf took on the topic of state control and global conspiracies, using interactive comics as a means of communication with the player.
At the center of history Liberated – a young man Barry Edwards, who once missed the train and is now trying to hide from the special services, which are looking for him for hacking. The fact that the hacker is the son of the Secretary of National Security Jeffrey Stroud, and Barry is not his real name, makes the story especially piquant.
And now, after a few minutes of a bright pursuit and a miraculous salvation, you will learn about an underground group of members of the resistance who want to destroy the system of state control and liberate the world. The emergence of a local analogue of the Chinese “Social Rating” and the emergence of a tough police state was at one time provoked by the terrorist attack on St. Martha’s school, where teachers and children were tragically killed, but members of the resistance and local conspiracy theorists have their own version of the development of events.
Liberated consists of four comic book chapters, sliding through the pages of which you collect parts of the overall plot puzzle, moving in time and switching between sides of the conflict. Barry, members of the resistance and the Secretary of Security himself become the protagonists of this story.
Most of the screen time you are presented with animated pictures on the pages of the magazine, which are sometimes replaced by action. You can control the character by moving from left to right and shooting or silently removing the emerging enemies. Sometimes the developers give you a ride on the elevator, overcome the abyss of stairways with wires or walk along the thin edge of the cornice, but most of the time is spent on thoughtless and very insipid shooting opponents and walking across the screen. Rarely do you see simple puzzles like breaking door locks with the correct numbers or solving simple problems of connecting electrical circuits and lines.
In the story part, the authors ask you to make QTE choices that slightly affect the fate of one or more characters, but the ending will be determined only by your decisions in the final comic, where you will have to put likes and dislikes on messages on a fictional forum. Naturally, this approach is somewhat disappointing, completely leveling out the past elections. The dialogues are insipid and not catchy, as are the antagonists presented to your judgment. The authors clearly lack detailed elaboration and a good screenwriter. The motivation for some of the traitors within the police is questionable.
The visuals are one of Liberated’s greatest strengths. The game perfectly resists noir style, switching between screens is smooth, and camera turns and working with angles create a vivid cinematic effect. The animation of the characters is a bit wooden, but this is not surprising, since the team had clear problems with the availability of spare funds.
