izigame.me

I'm not very good at putting my thoughts to words, so apologies if this review is a bit disjointed.
I very much enjoyed this game. I bought it expecting one thing, and ended up getting that and so much more.

The game starts with your friend inviting you into a secret club of people who watch secret camera feeds (cages), which sometimes include people (monkeys). Cages can be anything from an apartment building or work office, to a farm field or a highway, as well as some more unexpected ones I won't spoil. It all begins with you accepting the group rules and downloading the application to your PC. From there, you get full control.
The stat management mechanic is kind of punishing when paired with the observation system, especially at the start. If I'm being honest, after I lost the first time, I really considered enabling peeper mode (supposedly easier stat management, but disabled achievements), but I didn't, and now I can't imagine this game without the background anxiety.

This is the part where I ramble about the stat management mechanics at play and how they work together:
So this game only really asks three things from you to avoid a game over. Every 3 days the landlady stops by for $90 in rent, have enough cash on hand or get evicted. Every 5 days, the club evaluates you. Have the required number of cages unlocked (at $50 a piece) or get expelled from the group. And don't die.
You have 5 stats to worry about:
Cash: Money is ALWAYS an issue. Even on my 4th playthrough, when I was maxing my cash, I was always still just one round of cages or a fat grocery trip away from being broke again haha. But keep in mind I liked hording my trophies, which can usually be sold for a pretty penny, or kept to vibe up your room. And then you're always worried about having enough for rent or being able to afford enough cages for your next evaluation. There is some serious money to be made out there if you know where to look though. Through both moral and immoral routes. There are also jobs but I'll get into that with time.
Hunger: Self explanatory. When you get hungry, you start losing health. Eat food. The only free food the game ever gave me was a hotdog, an apple, and a couple cups of coffee at start. The rest was on me.
Fatigue: Also self explanatory. If you get too tired your vision will start blurring and you'll lose health. Either sleep or drink coffee (at the cost of health) to replenish.
Health: You'll lose health if you get hungry or tired. Also eating unhealthy food like takeout or coffee lowers health, but takeout is usually cheaper and doesn't waste time going to the store. You restore health by eating healthy food like fruit. All food minus coffee at the store is either healthy, or not unhealthy. But you use an hour going to the store and it's pretty pricey for the amount of hunger replenished. So you're constantly deciding whether to order fast, cheap food to save time/money at the cost of health, or buying expensive healthy food to avoid dying.
Time: Time is always ticking at a brisk pace. The only times that time stops is while you're reading the paper at the start of each day, before you close the comment on your work after a job, or while you're talking to someone (unless YOU call them on the phone). Also when you pause the whole game lol. Time is super important. The mailman only delivers packages within a certain time frame, the landlady comes at a specific time, most cages have a routine you need to learn and watch at specific times to get specific info, people you need to contact are only available within certain time windows, some jobs are time specific, etc. Plus there are timed cages that you can fail, but I'm not going to spoil which ones. There is also a job system in which you basically trade time and stats for money. You randomly get 3 posted on your door a day. They have basically for example: Warehouse Worker $88/8h Available 21:00 - 13:00. Something like this would lower hunger and fatigue. Show up to work well rested and not hungry to do a good job or risk being paid less. Some jobs give different stats and require different stats. Potato chip tester requires you to show up kinda hungry and awards hunger but lowers health. Show up full and you do a bad job and barely get paid. Some better jobs require experience. Like you can't be a warehouse manager until you've worked the warehouse floor a few times.
So with all that together, you're constantly juggling your money between required things to avoid a game over, and things to stay alive. Trying to work because you need cash, but not miss any events. Trying to stay rested, but not wanting to waste time, or miss out on night active cages. Starving, but you only have $100 and rent is due today. And all this on top of your actual mission of watching the cages. It's a very nice struggle in my opinion and adds to the dystopian vibe of the game.

THE GAME:
So now that you know the struggle, let's talk about the game. I'm not gonna spoil much because the sense of wonder of what the next cage might hold is half the fun.
So you have the hidden camera feeds right? The goal is to watch them, and locate either clues you click on in the scene, or words people say in dialogue (which is all text, no voice acting). You automatically log each clue in your notebook, in a logical manner grouping everything together, which after more info is discovered, forms an interconnected web of information.
Now if you click those clues, it inputs them into an in-game search engine. A lot of the detective work you're going to be doing is going to be observing, writing down clues, and using them to find better clues or just downright info like an address or name. The club will sometimes ask you for info on a cage, like name or address. You can do these or not with no penalty, but doing them does get you paid, and occasionally will disrupt a cage.
Here is a made up example that is not from the game to give you an idea:
The club hits you up and says, "What is the address of Cage 3" You open cage 3 and you're watching an old man pace a room for exercise. You do not know his name. You do know that he sees a doctor and have the clue, "doctor." He mentions the clue, "special prescription shoes." saying that they don't seem to be helping his back. You search the clues doctor+special prescription shoes and it pulls up an article about a doctor and his patented shoes with his name as a clue. Search his name and you now have his phone number. Call him and social engineer the name of the old man from him. Now search the old man's name and you now have his address and phone number. You can now complete the observation request from the club.
That's pretty much the gameplay loop paired with all the stat management I mentioned before. There's a ton more to it all, like the cages are legitimately interesting and sometimes supernatural. You truly never know what you're gonna get next. And even when you do view it, you're like, "okay, what is gonna happen here" lol. And a bunch of rooms never get a club info request, they're just there for you to figure out at your own discretion.
Now there's just one last thing I wanna mention. Interacting with the cages AKA feeding the monkeys. DO NOT FEED THE MONKEYS. But if you did, you would have many many routes and choices in which way you would wanna do that. There's also a karma system but I'm leaving all that for you do discover. An example (FROM THE GAME SLIGHT SPOILER) would be the photographer taking sneaky photos. You can either report them for a gift, or blackmail them for a choice between two different gifts. One of those being removing the hour time cost for going to the store.

FINAL THOUGHTS
All in all, I'm loving this game. Lots of secrets and replayability. 5th playthrough and still finding new cages and routes within ones I thought I knew.