NORTH is a fantastic blend of sci fi adventure and social commentary in which you explore a bizarre futuristic Blade Runner-esque city, filled with strange creatures and strange customs.
As soon as you load up NORTH and are greeted with it’s striking visuals and a Vangelis-esque soundtrack, you know you’re about to experience something special. You play an asylum seeker in a futuristic city, attempting to get to grips with its customs and integrate yourself into its community. You experience the world and carry out certain objectives, all the while sending letters back home to your sister to describe your new life.
This city has some very strange customs that you’re unfamiliar with, all of which have allegories in the real world. The city is rife with drug use, paranoia and mental health issues, there’s a fear of terrorist attacks, suspicion of asylum seekers, and a heavy emphasis on surveillance. The citizens of this place seem to worship and all seeing eye (pretty much a surveillance network), you have to pass psychology tests at the police station and doctors even poke around in your brain to examine your dreams.
Your job is also particularly poignant – with you digging things out of the ground and torturing an alien entity known as ‘mother’ to create power for the city. Clearly lines of comparrison can be drawn between this and what we’re doing to mother earth. But that’s what makes NORTH so special, when you first enter its world, you’re thrown (and occasionally repulsed) by how bizarre this alien way of life is, but soon realize it’s not much different from our own – except in this world, you’re the outsider that’s looking for refuge. Highly recommended.
Controls: WASD – Movement, Shift – Sprint (in the mines), LMB – Interact
Available On: Windows Only
Download NORTH Here (Pay What You Want or Free)