George Orwell’s Animal Farm | PC Review

Some games are more equal than others. If this rings a bell, then you’ve probably read or seen George Orwell’s Animal Farm. It’s the classic novel from 1945 about animals rebelling and taking over the farm to improve their lives, and prove that they can do anything better than humans. It is an allegory for the Russian Revolution and the Stalinist era of the Soviet Union. Orwell himself called it a satirical tale against Stalin. The book was famously adapted into an animated film in 1954, which was later revealed as a scheme by the CIA’s Psychological Warfare department. There have also been adaptations for radio, stage, and comic books. And now we also have a game adaptation.

Comrades, What Is The Nature Of This Life Of Ours?

As far as I know, it’s the first time that Animal Farm is adapted as a game. The game is developed by Nerial and published by The Dairymen, in collaboration with the Orwell estate. As an adaptation, Orwell’s Animal Farm stays very close to the source material. They have created a game that is a combination of a visual novel and resource management simulation. It works very well together. 

Your goal in the game is to survive, plain and simple. The animals have many enemies and not all of them are sentient or come from outside their community. The game follows the storyline of the book, but not necessarily in the same order of events that happen in the book. The choices you make severely impact what will happen and your survivability.

Four Legs Good!

On your first playthrough, we see the actual revolution that installs Animalism as the guiding philosophy at Manor Farm, now renamed Animal Farm. The revolution is inspired by Old Major, whose dreams for equality among animals drives the pigs to start it. Three pigs stand out as the leaders of the farm. Napoleon is a large Berkshire boar who represents Stalin in the tale. Snowball is Napoleon’s rival, and the initial leader of the revolution. He represents Trotsky/Lenin. The third one is Squealer, who acts as Napoleon’s second-in-command and minister of propaganda. But you don’t need to know these allegories to enjoy this game.

There are other characters who are important for the farm’s survival, like Boxer, Clover and Mollie the horses, Benjamin the donkey, the sheep, and the hens. They must all work together to keep the farm going. Certain choices will also allow you to add animals to the farm, but poor management and poor choices will result in loss of life or animals fleeing the farm. Make sure you keep everyone happy and fed and you’ll go a long way. Which leads us to the resource management aspect of the game.

Two Legs Bad!

The resource management part of Orwell’s Animal Farm is deciding how much work must be done, what orders will be given, what to focus on, etc. You also need to keep everyone happy and alive, make sure the buildings are repaired in time, manage the defenses and come up with upgrades to the farm. Being the leader is not easy! Keeping your people happy might come at the cost of work, which means that your grain store will be empty halfway through the winter. Keeping your farm up-to-date might come at the cost of your defenses, meaning you might fall in battle. 

Striking a balance here is much more challenging than it looks and is also where most of the fun is. One playthrough I did I tried to be as democratic as possible, the other time I tried the exact other way. The results differed greatly. There are multiple endings and destinies to find, as well as different achievements. The trick is to find them all, even if that means making decisions that you would never make as yourself.

No Animal In England Is Free

The graphic style is very much inspired by the 1954 movie. It comes across as pages from an illustrated novel, and it’s quite nice. A lot of effort is put in the voice casting. Most of the game is narrated by Abubakar Salim whose voice sounds remarkably like Idris Elba. His narration adds nicely to the tone of the game. The music is subtle and the sound effects are spot on. However, if you don’t like it or think it becomes repetitive, you can turn it all off. The controls are basic point and click, where you can move the cursor over the animals present and see what choosing this option will do to their morale, the overall morale and/or the food supply. This makes for very easy gameplay.

It’s not all sunshine on the farm, though. There were a few instances where the storyline didn’t exactly add up to previous choices. For instance, I once sacrificed Napoleon in a battle with the humans, but he still popped up later in that game with commentary, which made no sense. I also want to reiterate that this game is easy to play, but bloody hard to master! It will take you a few playthroughs to get the hang of it, but to get all the endings and destinies, you’ll need to play it quite a few times. Good thing that a playthrough will take about an hour. Some will take a lot less, though.

Conclusion

This is a great adaptation of the classic novel Animal Farm. It’s both easy and challenging, and it truly captures the spirit of the source material, both the book and the film. There might be a few inconsistencies in the game every now and then, but that takes nothing away from the heart of the game or from your enjoyment. Whether you are interested in the political subtext or not, this game will be great to play for anyone who enjoys story-driven resource management games. It will teach you how hard it is to keep a society going and to please everyone. And it might even give you some insights into the current state of our planet.

This review is based on a PC copy of George Orwell’s Animal Farm provided by Renaissance PR for coverage purposes. It is also available on Mac ($9.99), iOS ($3.99), and Android ($3.99).