Picture a game similar in certain respects to Papers, Please, except you’re the one in charge of creating the documents that can make or break someone’s livelihood instead of having to hastily review those same papers for accuracy at a busy border checkpoint. That is part of how I would personally describe Beholder 3, which comes our way from developer Paintbucket Games and publisher Alawar Premium.

Within Beholder 3, you play as a man by the name of Frank Schwarz. Frank starts out as an employee of a governmental ministry within a country known as “The Greatest Union.” The Greatest Union is led by a widely-beloved figure called the Great Leader. All Frank wants is a good job, a family, and a nice place to live. His job at the Ministry ensured that he could afford to maintain all of that. Or at least, it did until the events of June 3rd, 1989. On that fateful day, Frank was somehow found to be in possession of computer files associated with a growing resistance movement against the Great Leader.

As a result of his newfound ties to that resistance movement, Frank was stripped of almost everything. He was fired from his well-paying job at the Ministry and he and his family were evicted from their nice house. Thankfully, one of the higher-ups at Frank’s former employer decided to spare him any of the worse possible fates that could befall someone in the resistance movement. Instead of being sent to work in the dreaded mines (or worse), Frank’s punishment sees him employed as the property manager of a decently-sized apartment building.

Frank is told by his sole remaining contact at the Ministry, a particularly short-tempered man by the name of Ernst Müller, that if he plays his cards right and keeps his head down, for the time being, he can slowly work his way back up the rungs of the Ministry’s ladder. For now, Frank is supposed to sit in his new home office and do what he’s told until opportunity knocks for him once again. That’s where you come in.

You’re tasked with controlling Frank as he dutifully carries out every task laid before him. Since Frank’s new position basically makes him the janitor of the apartment building, the gameplay loop begins with more menial tasks. For example, every day, Frank is expected to repair the communal washing machine, refill the building’s central heating system with oil, and take out the garbage. Doing all these things daily will reward you with a little extra cash while failing to attend to these objectives for too long will result in a game over.

Thankfully, handling those more janitorial jobs doesn’t take long at all. It’s just a matter of remembering to attend to them on a daily basis and (more importantly) ensuring that you’ve also remembered to purchase the necessary supplies from the nearby kiosk. More specifically, you’ll need something called a “descaler” for the washing machine and a bottle of oil for the central heating system. These supplies aren’t exactly prohibitively expensive by any stretch, but their costs can add up over time if you don’t carefully manage your income.

Speaking of income, your primary source of cash comes from carefully following instructions given to you by others. When you first start out as a property manager, you’ll usually be assigned new tasks by Müller when he calls you via the telephone in your home office. More often than not, doing what you’re told within the assigned time limit (if there is one) will net you some income. Failing any task given to you by Müller will typically result in (you guessed it) an unfortunate outcome for Frank and his family.

You’ll need all that cash for more than just washing machine descalers and heating oil, too. As you might expect since you’re the building’s property manager, you’re also responsible for making sure each and every relevant bill gets paid in full and on time. For example, you’ll have to pay bills for utilities like water and electricity, garbage removal, and even a mandatory tax to support The Greatest Union’s armed forces. The latter of these is imposed upon you due to your status as a “blameless citizen,” which I inexplicably find amusing.

The game will helpfully tell you as soon as any given bill comes due and even goes the extra mile by reminding you when you’re almost out of time to pay anything. By this point, I don’t need to tell you what will probably happen if you fail to attend to all your bills in a timely manner. You’ll also have extra bills added to your expenses if you screw up one of your primary duties as the property manager.

More specifically, if you’re caught in any tenant’s apartment without their permission to be there, they’ll rather explicitly show you the door and you’ll be fined for going outside the scope of your duties. That’s not to say you can’t enter anyone’s apartment whenever necessary, as you have the master key to the entire building. It’s just that if you need to do that for any reason, you’re restricted to entering other apartments when their occupants aren’t home if you want to avoid a penalty.

Of course, you can also simply knock on someone’s door while they’re home if you just want to talk to them. You are most assuredly expected to get to know each and every tenant who resides in your apartment building. In order to make this work, you’re going to have to have at least one conversation with them all. As Ernst Müller puts it at the beginning of the game, “If someone has a cold without you knowing about it – your fault.”

A useful feature in these situations is the fact that you can look through the keyhole of an apartment’s front door if you’re not sure whether or not the relevant tenants are home. Doing so will give you a clear view of most (though sometimes not all) of the apartment’s interior and anyone who might be in it. This has saved me from a fair few fines when I needed to enter someone’s apartment for any reason. Most tenants I’ve encountered have to leave their apartments sooner or later. Thanks to your ability to speed up in-game time at will, I don’t find it very troublesome to just wait them out.

Of course, while you’re sitting at home descaling washing machines, taking out the garbage, and keeping increasingly close tabs on all your tenants, there remains the matter of Frank’s home life and relationships with his own family. Frank’s wife and two children don’t really understand why the lot of you were suddenly forced to move into a markedly worse housing situation. To be fair, Frank hasn’t entirely figured that out either.

Frank wants to be a good husband and father, but the events of that fateful day in June 1989 have significantly strained his relationships with his family. That’s especially true as far as his wife is concerned. Frank’s spouse, Sabine, is exceptionally unhappy with her family’s current circumstances, and she takes virtually every opportunity she gets to make sure Frank knows that. That’s one reason why it falls to you to help Frank prove to his kin that he still has what it takes to be a model family man, in addition to everything else you’ll have to deal with over the course of the game.

Remember how I said earlier that Frank is expected to sit in his home office, keeping his head down and doing exactly what he’s told until opportunity knocks for him once again? Well, if you’re diligent enough about your duties, it won’t take too long for exactly that to happen. You’ll eventually get a call from Müller informing you that you’ve been awarded a new, low-ranking position at the same Ministry which formerly employed you.

This news might reasonably lead you to believe that your current hardships are nearly at an end because you’re back in the government’s good graces. That isn’t quite the case. You’ve still got quite a climb ahead of you if you hope to get back to where you were before June of 1989, but this is certainly a notable step in the right direction. You’ll basically serve as Müller’s errand-boy once you’re re-employed by the Ministry.

That means the new gig isn’t much of a change from what you’ve been doing up to this point. Now you see Müller in person more often rather than just getting your orders barked at you over the phone. As for what Müller typically asks you to do, I’m afraid I can’t really go into detail about that because doing so would quickly bring us into spoiler territory. Suffice it to say that the Ministry may not be what you previously thought it was for various reasons.

Something else I can safely tell you is that just because you’ve been given your new position over at the Ministry doesn’t mean your tenure as the apartment building’s property manager has come to an end. Müller makes it clear that you’re expected to figure out how best to divide your time between your duties at the Ministry building and everything with you do at the apartments. This serves to add even more responsibilities to Frank’s already rapidly-filling plate.

If you’re not careful, everything you have to attend to daily can become overwhelming. Personally, this hasn’t become too much of an issue for me, though there have certainly been times when that came fairly close to changing. I’ve found that it helped to make a sort of mental checklist to ensure that I did everything I had to do daily as soon as it needed to be done. This wasn’t a cure-all solution by any stretch.

I eventually started to form a routine. I would travel by metro to the Ministry building early every morning, stay there until I felt I had accomplished enough of my duties to justify leaving, then head back home in the evening to take care of almost everything else for which I was responsible. Even taking into account the magnitude of the things I was asked to do while at the Ministry, though, I’d be lying if I said this newfound routine didn’t at least occasionally become somewhat monotonous.

I wanted to know more about what might have been unfolding before my eyes within the ranks of the government of The Greatest Union, but the process of actually finding all that out didn’t manage to hold my interest as well as I thought it would. That’s the main reason I gradually allowed my time with Beholder 3 to come to an end. I find the game’s story intriguing, but not quite gripping or fast-paced enough to keep me playing.

That’s my final verdict on Beholder 3. Now that I think about it, that largely sums up my thoughts on the other two games in the franchise as well. I’m aware that this may seem anticlimactic, but it’s the most detailed conclusion I’m capable of delivering.

A PC review key for Beholder 3 was provided by Alawar Premium for this review.

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Beholder 3

$14.99

7

Score

7.0/10

Pros

• Intriguing Story
• Core gameplay loop is largely easy to learn

Cons

• Game expects players to remember increasingly long lists of tasks
• Story may not be gripping or fast-paced enough