The Curfew Game
| Written by: Etali |
| Date: 2010-07-29 |
Channel 4 has launced The Curfew, an adventure webgame with a political thriller theme of trust, privacy and liberty. The Curfew was designed by BAFTA award winning agency Littleloud, and written by Kieron Gillen. Set in 2027 in the heart of an authoritarian security state, The Curfew could be described as a miniature Canterbury Tales set in a not-so-distant future, where citizens must abide by government security measures and second-class citizens are placed under curfew at night. The player must navigate this new locked-down world, and engage with the characters met along the way, in order to work out who to trust with some leaked, government-shaming data. The Curfew takes place over one night in which four ordinary people (the immigrant, the dissident, the ex-cop, and the youth) find themselves trapped by the curfew in a hostel, re-purposed as a safe house. When the game begins the player is passed a data-laden disk containing information that could hopefully be disastrous for the government if delivered into the wrong hands. The player - only hours away from capture - must find someone in the safe house to trust with this information. To fill the curfew hours the characters share their stories: when they leave the room “ depending on the player’s choices “ their outcomes will be revealed. “Fully operating curfews actually do exist in over a thousand towns and cities across Britain today, where anyone under the age of 16-years-old found outside after 9pm can be removed from the streets and sent home by police,” says Alice Taylor, Commissioning Editor, Channel 4 Education. “The Curfew was commissioned in response to this. So many civil liberties and freedoms have been outlawed, piece by piece, in recent years: it’s no wonder we’re told so many young people are disaffected by politics and politicians. We hope The Curfew will help inspire young people to become more involved in society and politics, and we’re fantastically proud and pleased to see that Kieron Gillen, Simon Parkin and the team at Littleloud have produced a web game of such ground-breaking power and beauty.” The game addresses a wide range of political themes targeted at young people, challenging them to examine the freedoms they currently enjoy and the potential consequences if they do not protect them. This forward-thinking game encourages players to choose their words carefully as they explore the characters’ political predicaments to discover some shattering truths. |
