In The Curfew, a Flash game from UK TV’s Channel 4, you’ll find out about British life in 2027, when anti-terror laws have become so strict there are curfews for everyone, and citizens win points for being ‘good’.
Using lots of live video, it looks pretty good, and even though it’s in beta, there are only a few bugs. Your nameless character is on the run after curfew, carrying some information that could harm the government you apparently hate. In The Curfew, your task is to find someone who you can trust to look after that information for you.
It’s a kind of point and click adventure. As such, it doesn’t really require skill, but you do need to think about your actions. To find someone you can trust, they’ll have to trust you, and you gain their trust by asking them the right kind of questions. There are four main stories, and during these you have to gain the trust of the people talking to you.
Designed to make you think about liberties, law and society, The Curfew has pretty high aims. It’s difficult to make an educational game that’s not patronizing or simply boring, but I think this does a good job of being neither. The depressing image it presents of the future is believable, although I was surprised to see that fashion seems to stop in 2010!
What The Curfew does require is time, as you can’t rush through. Some people might find this frustrating, but it does offer three save game slots, which is really unusual for a browser game. Overall I enjoyed playing this, and I recommend having a go at it instead of watching a TV show sometime. The only thing I really disliked was the inclusion of a fake “The Call Of Grand Theft Duty 13” game in the story, which felt unnatural and too obvious!
You can only play one episode at a time, and have to return a week later to continue, which is a strange nod to TV shows! Check out The Curfew.
