Games Like Orwell: 9 Games Where You Watch or Check
What are the best games like Orwell?
Updated October 2026.
The closest games to Orwell are its sequel, Orwell: Ignorance is Strength, then The Operator, Replica and Beholder 2. Papers, Please, Not For Broadcast, Do Not Feed the Monkeys 2099, Mainlining and Not Tonight share the idea from further away. The best game overall is Papers, Please. In each one you are the person reading someone else’s files, checking their papers or deciding what the public gets to see. If you have already played both Orwells, my next pick is The Operator.
A surveillance game is a game where your job is to watch other people through their files, cameras or documents, and the story turns on what you choose to pass on, hide or act on.
Orwell: Keeping an Eye On You is the purest version of that idea. You are the first human researcher on a government program called Orwell, reading web pages, social media posts, chat logs, emails and medical files, and only the pieces you hand over are seen by the security forces. It came out in 2016 and sits at 15,586 Steam reviews, 90% positive (as of October 2026). The part that stays with you is the filter: the system acts on whatever you give it, and you rarely know enough to be sure.
My test for this list: you have to be the watcher or the checker, the one with access to other people’s information, and what you do with it has to matter. Hacking games where you play an outlaw breaking into systems for yourself did not make the cut; Replica and Mainlining stay because you hack on the state’s behalf.
What do you watch in each game, and what can you do with it?
| Game | What you watch | What you can do with it |
|---|---|---|
| Orwell: Ignorance is Strength | Web pages, social media and private messages of the editor of The People’s Voice and his family | Pass on the truth, or bend it into your own version |
| The Operator | Video, photos, citizen and vehicle databases at an agency called the FDI | Feed field agents the facts they ask for, then follow the evidence past what you were told |
| Replica | A stranger’s cellphone, its call history and social media accounts | Hack the owner’s accounts and look for evidence of terrorism, toward one of 12 endings |
| Beholder 2 | Your colleagues and your boss at a state ministry | Climb the career ladder by scheming, or expose the corruption |
| Papers, Please | Passports, permits and fingerprints at a border checkpoint | Let people in, turn them away or have them arrested |
| Not For Broadcast | A live national news broadcast from the editing booth | Pick the shots, censor “troublesome” content, or let the scandal air |
| Do Not Feed the Monkeys 2099 | Strangers in their homes through hidden cameras | Log what you see and dig for more online, or break the club’s one rule and interfere |
| Mainlining | Suspects’ computers and phones, from your own desktop | Build a case good enough for the longest sentence the courts will give |
| Not Tonight | IDs and guest lists at the door of pubs and clubs | Wave people in, refuse them, and keep your own right to stay |
| Sam, We Talked About This (ours · unreleased) | Every sentence, image and video on the internet | Scrape it, train models on it, win subscribers |
| Game | Released (as of October 2026) | Regular price (as of October 2026) | Main story, HowLongToBeat | Steam reviews (as of October 2026) | Positive |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Orwell: Ignorance is Strength | 2018 | $9.99 | 3.7 hours | 1,921 | 76% |
| The Operator | 2024 | $13.99 | 3.6 hours | 8,895 | 92% |
| Replica | 2016 | $2.99 | 1.1 hours | 3,534 | 86% |
| Beholder 2 | 2018 | $17.99 | 13.0 hours | 8,185 | 87% |
| Papers, Please | 2013 | $9.99 | 5.0 hours | 80,645 | 97% |
| Not For Broadcast | 2022 | $24.99 | 8.8 hours | 12,713 | 94% |
| Do Not Feed the Monkeys 2099 | 2023 | $14.99 | 4.3 hours | 1,145 | 69% |
| Mainlining | 2017 | $12.99 | 4.9 hours | 368 | 77% |
| Not Tonight | 2018 | $19.99 | 11.0 hours | 2,796 | 82% |
Prices are Steam’s regular US prices; several of these were on sale when I checked, so you may pay less. Lengths are HowLongToBeat’s “Main Story” averages for Orwell: Ignorance is Strength, The Operator, Replica, Beholder 2, Papers, Please, Not For Broadcast, Do Not Feed the Monkeys 2099, Mainlining and Not Tonight. Three of those averages rest on very few players: 14 for Do Not Feed the Monkeys 2099, 18 for Mainlining and 31 for Beholder 2.
Which game like Orwell should you play first?
If you have not played Orwell: Ignorance is Strength, I would start there, then go straight to The Operator, the closest new game for Orwell players. Papers, Please is the better game overall, but it asks you to check documents against rules, which is a different skill from reading a person’s life and deciding what it means.
Orwell: Ignorance is Strength: the sequel that lets you lie
Orwell: Ignorance is Strength is the closest match on this list, because it is the same game with one new permission. You join a secret department called The Office and dig into Raban Vhart, editor of The People’s Voice and self-proclaimed guardian of truth, along with his wife and his brother. This time you can do more than pass on what you find: the store page says you can use it “to create your own version of the truth”. A new time-of-day system also makes who you investigate, and when, matter more. It was released in three episodes in 2018, and its reception is the weaker of the two Orwells: 76% positive across 1,921 reviews (as of October 2026).
The Operator: the case files at a desk
The Operator is my pick for anyone who has finished both Orwells, because you work through the agency’s software on one computer and you are the person feeding information to the people who act on it. You are a new Operator at an agency called the FDI, and field agents call you for support: fact-checking, database searches, identifying a killer. The store page lists the tools you click through: a Video and Photo Analyzer, a Citizen and Vehicle Database, ChemScan, a notepad and a working terminal. Cases cover murders, missing people and cyber attacks, and the store page’s garbled text calls your superiors liars and ends on “TRUST NO ONE”. It came out in July 2024 and sits at 8,895 reviews, 92% positive (as of October 2026), the strongest score here after Papers, Please and Not For Broadcast.
Replica: one stranger’s phone
Replica is the one I would play if you want Orwell’s job squeezed into a single evening. The government hands you a stranger’s cellphone, and under its pressure you hack into the owner’s accounts and go through the usage history and social media records looking for evidence of terrorism (Steam). The whole game is played through that phone, and the store page counts 12 endings. It is short: 1.1 hours of main story on HowLongToBeat, averaged from 40 players. It sits at 86% positive across 3,534 reviews at a $2.99 regular price (as of October 2026), and it runs on Windows and macOS.
Beholder 2: spying on the office
Beholder 2 is my pick if you want the watching to feed a career rather than a case. You start as an intern at the central ministry of a totalitarian state, and the store page sums up the job as scheming against employees, spying on your boss and completing paperwork, or turning against the state. If you never played the first Beholder (2016), where you are a state-installed landlord bugging your tenants’ flats, that one is the closer fit to Orwell. The sequel is the longer game: 13.0 hours on HowLongToBeat against 6.1 for the original.
Papers, Please: the checkpoint
Papers, Please is the most famous game here, and it fits because you are the state’s eyes at a single desk. You are an immigration inspector at the Grestin border checkpoint of Arstotzka, and with only travellers’ documents and the ministry’s inspect, search and fingerprint tools you decide who gets in, who is turned away and who is arrested (Steam). It has the most reviews and the highest score on this list: 80,645 reviews, 97% positive (as of October 2026).
Not For Broadcast: editing the news
Not For Broadcast is the one I would play if Orwell’s best moments were about who controls the story. You are the janitor who ends up running the editing booth of the National Nightly News after a new party wins the election, and live on air you choose the shots and censor anything “troublesome” (Steam). It is built from full-motion video, it is funny, and the store page counts 14 endings. At $24.99 regular price it is the most expensive game here, and it is Windows only on Steam (as of October 2026).
Do Not Feed the Monkeys 2099: watching through cameras
Do Not Feed the Monkeys 2099 is the most voyeuristic game here, and the weakest by its reviews. You are a member of the Primate Observation Club, watching strangers through hidden cameras from your home in a retro-futuristic 2099, searching the internet to learn more about each subject and taking side jobs to pay for more cameras (Steam). The club’s one rule is that you never interfere. Its reviews are Mixed: 69% positive across 1,145 (as of October 2026). The 2018 original, Do Not Feed the Monkeys, is the better-reviewed game if you can only play one: 94% positive across 12,796 reviews (as of October 2026).
Mainlining: the desktop investigation
Mainlining is a small pick, and I list it because it is the most literal match for Orwell’s desktop. The entire game takes place on the simulated computer of a newly recruited MI7 agent, and you hack suspects’ computers and phones to gather evidence under a law that makes all online personal data available to the state (Steam). It has only 368 reviews, 77% positive (as of October 2026), so weigh that score lightly. It is Windows only.
Not Tonight: the door
Not Tonight is Papers, Please moved to a nightclub door in an alternative Britain where a far-right government has taken power. You work as a bouncer through a gig-economy app, checking IDs and guest lists at pubs, clubs and festivals while your own status is in question (Steam). It plays under a clock, so I would point players who liked the pressure of Papers, Please here before Orwell fans who liked the slow reading. It sits at 82% positive across 2,796 reviews (as of October 2026).
What does this list leave out?
It leaves out the side of surveillance where you are the machine. Orwell’s twist is that a program does the collecting and you are only the human filter; if you would rather be the program, that is its own list of games where you play as the AI. The first Do Not Feed the Monkeys also appears in our list of games that satirize big tech, next to Hypnospace Outlaw, where you police a whole network for the company that owns it.
It also leaves out scale. Every game above puts one person, one phone, one door or one broadcast in front of you at a time. If you would rather stop reading one life and work on the whole world’s population at once, our games like Plague Inc list starts from that other end.
Where our game fits
Our own game, Sam, We Talked About This, sits beside this list rather than on it. Orwell has you read a handful of suspects’ data; Sam scrapes every sentence, image and video on the internet. It is an idle incremental game, played as a light loop that keeps speeding itself up rather than a thriller you read through. An incremental game is a game built around numbers that grow faster than you can spend them: you buy something that makes more of the resource, which buys more of that thing, until the scale changes and new systems appear. In Sam you train text, image and video models on what you scrape, put the models to work winning subscribers, and turn the cash into more storage, bigger machines and a bigger crew, until AGI is waiting at the end. It is unreleased, due on Steam in Q1 2027, so there is nothing to point at yet beyond its Steam page.
Frequently asked questions
How long is Orwell: Keeping an Eye On You? 4.6 hours for the main story, averaged across 607 player submissions on HowLongToBeat (as of October 2026). The sequel, Orwell: Ignorance is Strength, is a little shorter at 3.7 hours, so the pair together still fits inside a weekend.
Which game like Orwell is the longest? Beholder 2, at 13.0 hours of main story on HowLongToBeat, followed by Not Tonight at 11.0 and Not For Broadcast at 8.8. Treat the Beholder 2 figure as rough, because only 31 players submitted a time. Replica is the shortest here, at about an hour.
Is there a game like Orwell where you search someone’s phone? Yes: Replica. You are handed a phone that belongs to someone you have never met, and the state wants you to find something it can call terrorism in the owner’s accounts. It costs $2.99 at regular price on Steam (as of October 2026).
Which games like Orwell run on a Mac? Six of the nine do: Orwell: Ignorance is Strength, The Operator, Replica, Beholder 2, Papers, Please and Do Not Feed the Monkeys 2099 all list macOS on Steam (as of October 2026). Not For Broadcast, Mainlining and Not Tonight are Windows only there.
Key takeaways
- Orwell: Ignorance is Strength is the closest match; once you have played both Orwells, my next pick is The Operator.
- Replica is the shortest close match: one stranger’s phone, about an hour of main story.
- Papers, Please has the most reviews and the highest score here, 97% positive across 80,645 (as of October 2026), but it is about checking, not reading.
- Not For Broadcast is the pick for controlling the story, Beholder 2 for spying on your own workplace, Not Tonight for working a door under a clock.
- Do Not Feed the Monkeys 2099 and Mainlining fit the theme closely but have the weakest numbers here: 69% positive and 368 reviews.
