Getting into George Orwell’s 1945 Story
Back in 1945, George Orwell published a novella called Animal Farm. The story takes place on a farm where the animals are fed up with their farm owner and want to rebel against him, in the hopes of creating a better-made society than humans have ever been able to. Coming back to current times, the developers over at Nerial wanted to bring the story of Orwell’s Animal Farm into an interactive story, and what a year to do so, as 2020 has been a time where we’ve all looked at our different societies and wondering what it would be like if we put more rules and thought into them in the beginning.
Nerial’s release of Orwell’s Animal Farm game has you, the gamer, take control of what decisions the farm animals take to ensure the animal farm becomes a society that all animals are welcome and enjoy. Knowing the full story of Orwell’s Animal Farm after reading it in school years ago, I know myself that there are a few different endings that can happen down the path of the decisions that got made in the story, and seem to be made most of the time in the game too. There are a few different endings, and so it’s important to note that this is a decision-making game that you want to think about your choices. There’s a lot more going on than what is just said on the screen, and at times things can go off the wagon quickly.
Creating an animal society
Jumping into the game’s story, you start with a group of animals on Mr. Jones’s farm that are fed up with their farm owner and want change. Planning for years to take over the farm, they finally get their opportunity one night when farmer Mr. Jones leaves the farm door open while drunk. With quick thinking, the animals come together, chasing off the humans and taking over the farm. Once the takeover is complete, you will lead the animals around the farm to see what the humans have that animals don’t, such as beds, beer, and clothes. The animals will then come together for a meeting to make their society rules — that you don’t have much say in — but that will start your journey.
The animals eventually find their main leaders: pigs named Napoleon, Snowball, and their sidekick Squealer. After this, your main goal of the game will be to keep morale up on the farm with your sheep army that will read the rules of the animal farm every day to grow in numbers. You will use the other animals to build defenses around the farm from the farmers around that want to take back the farm. You will also need to pick which animals will gather food and manage the crops on the farm. These decisions matter, but with not much of a tutorial on how your decisions will affect your animals, it’s tough to make informed decisions. One thing that was clear is that animals will tire quickly if you make them do the same job each day.
Orwell’s Animal Farm doesn’t have many settings to choose from when making your animal society. However, it’s interesting to choose wisely when talking to the animals to see how things pan out. You may think you’ve hit the ending quickly after meeting all the animals and farmers, but with a few different endings, as said earlier, the game will ensure the player thinks about their choices all the way up to the end.
After playing for a few hours, I was able to get two different endings of the game. The first time, all my animals died because I wanted to see what would happen if I made them leave one by one in response to Napoleon becoming something of a dictator. In my second ending, I gave the farm back to the human farmers when I saw that the pigs once again were becoming a communist society.
What does the story teach us?
After playing through the story for a while and getting a few different endings, I was pleasantly surprised with how well the developers over at Nerial could bring back the memories of reading the book and watching the movie back in school. After seeing the story I remembered in my first few playthroughs, I was ready to give this game another run to see if I could alter the ending a bit. While I was able to somewhat alter the story, it was a little difficult since the game seemed like it wanted to drag away a few of the animals I wanted to keep. While I didn’t want to give the dictator role to Napoleon, it seemed as though that was the path the game tried to force me down each time.
