About This Game Unheard Screams is a text based roleplaying game. You play as Miala, a Congolese liberator attempting to overthrow the regime of King Leopold II of Belgium (1885-1908). As the player your job is to fight the foreign oppressors and regain control of territories in the Congo while managing your rebellion's resources. 7aa9394dea Title: Unheard Screams - King Leopold II's Rule Over The CongoGenre: Indie, RPGDeveloper:LocomotivahPublisher:LocomotivahRelease Date: 11 May, 2015 Unheard Screams - King Leopold II's Rule Over The Congo Crack 64 Bit This is basically a text-based RPG that tells a revisionist history of colonial Congo, in which the Congolese rise up and overthrow the King of Belgium. (Picture Inglorious Basterds in text form, stripped of verbal pizzazz, and with Leopold II taking the place of the fuhrer).I'll concede upfront that it's not a particularly good game. The basic mechanic involves clicking on various villages, recruiting any of the locals that feel like joining your army, and then attacking whichever colonial official is labelled "Very Easy" at that moment. (The game calculates this automatically, depending on how many soldiers and weapons you've got with you at the time). The battles themselves require a bit of quick-thinking resource management, as various options pop up while the two sides trade attacks. Increase your defense, or call in reinforcements? Make yourself invulnerable for four rounds, or take a chunk out of your enemy's stamina stats? This is pretty much the only part of the game that requires any degree of skill, and the lack of clear instructions meant that it took me an hour or so until I realized that I was even supposed to be making some of these choices at all. Once you get the hang of it, though, the game becomes incredibly easy (probably mind-numbingly so for some players).There's no animation or sound effects to accompany any of this, just a mournful classical music loop that gets pretty annoying after awhile. However, the game is just short enough (1-2 hours) that I didn't get bored, though that's probably due to the fact that I'm a history nerd with a soft spot for a good colonial uprising. I particularly enjoyed the way that the victories snowballed into each other, with your army becoming larger, more and more villagers joining your side, and the momentum of inevitable victory beginning to take hold. (None of this is really communicated by the game; my imagination had to do the work). The final battle against Leopold himself is totally ridiculous from a factual standpoint, but also cathartic: who doesn't want to take some revenge for Congo's historical suffering, if only through a cheap Steam game? Unheard Screams is a curio, and probably won't be enjoyable unless you've got a particular interest in both colonial history and experimental video games. I'm gonna go out on a wild limb here and guess that's quite a niche market -- but it also happens to be one that I squarely belong to. So it's a "thumbs up" from me, and a bit of a warning to everyone else.. This is basically a text-based RPG that tells a revisionist history of colonial Congo, in which the Congolese rise up and overthrow the King of Belgium. (Picture Inglorious Basterds in text form, stripped of verbal pizzazz, and with Leopold II taking the place of the fuhrer).I'll concede upfront that it's not a particularly good game. The basic mechanic involves clicking on various villages, recruiting any of the locals that feel like joining your army, and then attacking whichever colonial official is labelled "Very Easy" at that moment. (The game calculates this automatically, depending on how many soldiers and weapons you've got with you at the time). The battles themselves require a bit of quick-thinking resource management, as various options pop up while the two sides trade attacks. Increase your defense, or call in reinforcements? Make yourself invulnerable for four rounds, or take a chunk out of your enemy's stamina stats? This is pretty much the only part of the game that requires any degree of skill, and the lack of clear instructions meant that it took me an hour or so until I realized that I was even supposed to be making some of these choices at all. Once you get the hang of it, though, the game becomes incredibly easy (probably mind-numbingly so for some players).There's no animation or sound effects to accompany any of this, just a mournful classical music loop that gets pretty annoying after awhile. However, the game is just short enough (1-2 hours) that I didn't get bored, though that's probably due to the fact that I'm a history nerd with a soft spot for a good colonial uprising. I particularly enjoyed the way that the victories snowballed into each other, with your army becoming larger, more and more villagers joining your side, and the momentum of inevitable victory beginning to take hold. (None of this is really communicated by the game; my imagination had to do the work). The final battle against Leopold himself is totally ridiculous from a factual standpoint, but also cathartic: who doesn't want to take some revenge for Congo's historical suffering, if only through a cheap Steam game? Unheard Screams is a curio, and probably won't be enjoyable unless you've got a particular interest in both colonial history and experimental video games. I'm gonna go out on a wild limb here and guess that's quite a niche market -- but it also happens to be one that I squarely belong to. So it's a "thumbs up" from me, and a bit of a warning to everyone else.. Despite being very interested in the subject and having high hopes for this game I can't recommend it. The gameplay itself is forgettable and repetitive: Go to each territory, recruit whomever is ready to join you and fight the enemy. Always picking the weakest enemy guarantees that you will win. There is no character development or any choice, aside from who you recruit and fight.There is no dialogue with the other characters, they will just give you a quote (which is sometimes cut off mid-word at the end as if there is a character limit)But then again this game, like other games from Locomotivah is not about gameplay, but about the story and about reflection. So does it deliver on this front?Well, as stated before I was pleasantly surprised at seeing the title but my excitement was replaced with worry as soon as I saw the protagonists name as Miala is not a Congolese name. It made me worried about the research behind the game and unfortunately this worry proved to be justified.None of the Congolese names are actually Congolese, they range in Culture from Southern African to Western African and anything in between. This made it very hard for me to get into the game, as I never got the idea that I was anywhere near the Congo, the Belgian names were reasonably accurate though.You get virtually no background information before you get started and even if you click on "learn more" there is very limited information, including a 5 book Bibliography of which only one is from the past twenty years.I also find it strange that one of the locals would compare Leopold II's riches to Rochefeller in one of the quote's. What would they care about Rochefeller? The story about Miala himself, which progresses whenever you kill a district commander, is also rather classic and unimaginative. And why in the world did the writers feel the need tohave him schooled and taught by a white man in matters of philosophy and warfare before he could rise to be a hero and rally his people? Every one of his ancestors probably knew more about those subjects than the average Belgian...Anyway, to summarize: This game is a shallow execution of an interesting topic.Pro's:+ Interesting topic+ Attempt to bring a lesser known part of history to attentionCons:- Poor immersion- Very limited roleplay- Hardly any strategy- Sometimes text is cut off - some spelling mistakes. Usually, I really like this type of game: text-based stories or adventures with some interactions (and usually a cheap and fair price).But, I'm sorry, the final product fail to impress: the base for the story is very interesting (and I didn't know that, so I cheked it), but the game itself fails to deliver any real emotion and the more "gaming" part of the game is too simple to amuse anyone.On the other hand, the game is priced really good, and I think you can "spare" 2\u20ac for a game like this.So, this is the classic problem with Steam review: this is a 6\/10 game, and I don't feel to do not recommed it, but also I have to notice how it fails to be... a game! And, at the same time, the story is to thin to "grab" you.So... 6\/10 (also for the fair price).. While it's 'gameplay' is questionable, I certainly found it worth my time and money for the writing, which gave insights on a piece of history hitherto completely unknown to me.. Positive things first: Good intent in the story and selection of topic. Yet the game leaves the impression that the historical issue was only scratched on the surface. The choice of the actual gameplay mechanic, which is quite simplistic (build up army, fight, repeat, repeat, watch your fatigue) and that of the protagonist seem both quite out of touch with historic realities. I might have rather played a text adventure as E. D. Morel in the \u00abCongo Free State Propaganda War\u00bb or anything from a western perspective that touches well documented reality, than as Miala, a fictional very vaguely defined native African rebellion leader in his early twenties. Spoiler: He dies after winning the final Battle against King Leopold II himself (seriously?) at age 31? Just Why? .The gameplay almost exclusively consists out of grinding through battles and increasing the strength of your army by beating the easiest opponents first (conveniently labeled \u00abvery easy\u00bb). The Campaign is beatable in under 30 minutes, probably always in under an hour. Once you figured out what does what in the very abstract fights, it's pretty much impossible to lose the game if you stick to the easiest opponents first. Since there is no variation or obvious alternate endings, the game itself doesn't offer any new content or difficulty in repeated playthroughs. It seems to be strictly linear. A lot of good chances were missed here and the lack of media other than text is astonishing, no explanatory maps, no short general introduction into the history of colonialism. The game itself transports no feeling of the horrors, only facts. One might want to read Joseph Conrad's "Heart of Darkness" or (re-)play Spec Ops: The Line (which is very loosely based on Apocalypse Now and Conrad's Book) and just imagine the setting being transformed to the Congolese jungle, to compensate for that.But for anyone who starts playing this and eventually learns on elsewhere about the topic and in the process probably gets lost in Wikipedia, I can still only recommend the game and hope for a better more extensive revisit to the topic at large in the future.. its pretty good for its price. Positive things first: Good intent in the story and selection of topic. Yet the game leaves the impression that the historical issue was only scratched on the surface. The choice of the actual gameplay mechanic, which is quite simplistic (build up army, fight, repeat, repeat, watch your fatigue) and that of the protagonist seem both quite out of touch with historic realities. I might have rather played a text adventure as E. D. Morel in the \u00abCongo Free State Propaganda War\u00bb or anything from a western perspective that touches well documented reality, than as Miala, a fictional very vaguely defined native African rebellion leader in his early twenties. Spoiler: He dies after winning the final Battle against King Leopold II himself (seriously?) at age 31? Just Why? .The gameplay almost exclusively consists out of grinding through battles and increasing the strength of your army by beating the easiest opponents first (conveniently labeled \u00abvery easy\u00bb). The Campaign is beatable in under 30 minutes, probably always in under an hour. Once you figured out what does what in the very abstract fights, it's pretty much impossible to lose the game if you stick to the easiest opponents first. Since there is no variation or obvious alternate endings, the game itself doesn't offer any new content or difficulty in repeated playthroughs. It seems to be strictly linear. A lot of good chances were missed here and the lack of media other than text is astonishing, no explanatory maps, no short general introduction into the history of colonialism. The game itself transports no feeling of the horrors, only facts. One might want to read Joseph Conrad's "Heart of Darkness" or (re-)play Spec Ops: The Line (which is very loosely based on Apocalypse Now and Conrad's Book) and just imagine the setting being transformed to the Congolese jungle, to compensate for that.But for anyone who starts playing this and eventually learns on elsewhere about the topic and in the process probably gets lost in Wikipedia, I can still only recommend the game and hope for a better more extensive revisit to the topic at large in the future.. its pretty good for its price
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Unheard Screams - King Leopold II's Rule Over The Congo Crack 64 Bit
Updated: Mar 12, 2020
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