Watch 10 minutes of gameplay from The Occupation, the upcoming journo thriller

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Multiple paths to the same goal.

Developer White Paper Games has released a 10-minute video showing some of the ways you can solve the investigative journalism puzzles in The Occupation, which is due out early next month.

I'm intrigued by the game's premise: it unfolds in real-time, and you have exactly four hours to investigate a bombing that took place in in the north-west of England, killing 23 people. It all takes place in one government building, and the trailer focuses on the Union Act, a new government act that restricts the freedom of citizens.

In the trailer, above, you're tipped off that figures around the Union Act are being inflated. It's your task to find a floppy disk containing the evidence, print it, and confront the person responsible, Carla Burman.

There will be multiple ways to achieve your goals. The most open bit of the trailer seems to be how you get into the office where the floppy disk is: you can sneak up some scaffolding on the side of the building, crawl through vents, spy on Burman while she taps the pass code into the office keypad, or flick a fuse to turn off the lock entirely. 

There's no combat, but plenty of sneaky stealth. You have to be careful to cover up your tracks—if an alarm goes off, the building staff will be watching your actions with more interest going forward, even if you're not caught doing anything untoward.

I'm reviewing the game early next month, and I'm keen to find out if it lives up to its ambitious aims. It's out on March 5.

Samuel Horti
Samuel Horti

Samuel is a freelance journalist and editor who first wrote for PC Gamer nearly a decade ago. Since then he's had stints as a VR specialist, mouse reviewer, and previewer of promising indie games, and is now regularly writing about Fortnite. What he loves most is longer form, interview-led reporting, whether that's Ken Levine on the one phone call that saved his studio, Tim Schafer on a milkman joke that inspired Psychonauts' best level, or historians on what Anno 1800 gets wrong about colonialism. He's based in London.