Respected games journalist Kieron Gillen has collaborated with the BAFTA award winning animation/game studio Little Loud and together (with more than a little help of the always willing to 'stick-it-to-the-man' British TV channel 4) have created a sort of 90's CD-ROM FMV style, Orwellian, episodic adventure game. Putting my overuse of verbs aside, the game's actually quite all-right...

The game starts with a slightly long load screen followed by a slightly long intro film shot in full motion video, FULL MOTION VIDEO! Sorry. The overused but still rocking 'Wolf Like Me' from TV on the Radio blasts over a scene of first person running through a futuristic Brighton. Everything is shot and styled with that typically clinical, Ch4 trendy grit, the actors are also moulded of that same stuff you would expect from an episode of Skins. The main protagonist of this episode known as 'The Boy' has a carefully crafted messy, curly look about him and wears a hooded leather jacket.

The intro video is made up of first person running through streets which is intersected with bullet-points summing up the time and place, in a nutshell it's 2027 and everything's gone all V for Vendetta. The person running, who I assume is the player turns a corner and is met by a man who passes you a gadget, 'Take this data and get to the safe house,' he says, after a little more running the game begins. I surprisingly thought that the intro was actually quite cool and not something I expected.

When the game starts proper it's instantly clear what sort of game this is going to be, which is a pure first person adventure game, sort of like those old CSI games and sort of like Myst. You control interactions with the mouse and the cursor changes when you hover over objects or people you can click on. While at the safe house there are four characters just waiting to be talked to but you can only talk to 'The Boy'. This is a game which has quite an interesting dialogue mechanic, you have the usual multiple choices with each question or response but there is a system built in where some choices can lead to characters distrusting you. It's an interesting feature but it sometimes felt awkward, maybe I was thinking about it too much. During one sequence I tried acting dumb and innocent which resulted in the boy calling me a bell-end. So it's not so much of a trust mechanic as it is a friendship one, but a 'friendship meter' sounds horrifically lame. This feature is only active in certain moments but I'm interested to see how this plays out over the course of the four part series.

From talking to The Boy, he sends you into a flashback of his adventures in trying to procure the latest release of the illegal video game 'Grand Theft Duty 13' which features 'heads exploding into 40,000 individually rendered particles of meaty brain goo.' The Boys adventure sees him talk to shifty characters in alleyways and dodge police in his quest to get hold of this game. The game acts as quite a decent objective through The Curfew as it shows some of the inner workings of the city. Citizens are divided up into alphabetical classes dependant on age, job and criminal record, to the point where even cues at a fast food restaurant are divided into classes A and B (class A being completely vacant and B being rammed). This class system also blocks B citizens from gaining access into different parts of the city. Having a gamer as a protagonist also allows for some gamer humour including a cheeky jab at Nintendos' over sensitive pandering to its consumers safety.

The Curfew isn't all about talking to people, you have access to a smart phone which is where the crux of the games very simple puzzles lay. Some areas of the world have been digitally 'tagged' by some of the underground citizens which you can see through the phones viewfinder. It basically boils down to scanning an area for the tags and clicking on them to see some hidden information. It's super simple, but this game isn't really about challenging the player much. I do like how tense some of the 'trust gaining' sections became, it was mildly reminiscent of the sort of choices you would make in Mass Effect 2.

There's a few mini games too, like a humorously pointless shooting gallery and a window cleaning game. These moments made me think of how this could make quite a successful Nintendo DS game, all of the interactions are very stylus friendly and I'm sure parts of the design have been lifted from the console.

Overall I quite enjoyed the game, it's a little cheesy and has that annoying Channel 4 vibe about it, but it's written well and it has a sense of being something bigger than it probably is. I look forward to next week when they release the next episode which allows you to talk to a second character in the safe house. I hope the game references The Boy in the second chapter in a way which helps you progress through the game, it would help to open up player directed narrative giving you more of a choice on what to do or where to go. It's worth noting that the game is in Beta so there are a couple of bugs here and there giving you access to unreleased content but what is supposed to be there is solid and complete.

Have a play here: http://www.thecurfewgame.com/play-now.htm