Every lover of platform games and who hides an interesting story behind it, should play Ministry of Broadcast. This is a game that has been ported from PC to mobile devices with a design and mechanics that will bring back fond memories for veteran gamers.
Base story and game type
Ministry of Broadcast is based on the 1984 novel by George Orwell. At the beginning, a gloomy and snow-covered world is posed as a result of a recent nuclear war that succumbed to the entire world. As a result a country arose where you find yourself that has been divided by a world because of a great political struggle. This same government tries to have control over the entire population to avoid another great world war. For this, numerous cameras were installed that are observing the entire population and that you will see throughout the game as well as some more than convoluted television programs.
In this game you will take the protagonist who has been separated from his family by the wall that has been built. His goal is to get a special visa that allows him to cross the wall to the other half of the country to reunite with his family. To do this, he must participate in a really dark television program that is part of a study being carried out by the government. In the course of the contest you will see how it begins as simple, very easy tests but throughout the game you will see how it travels to a much murkier environment with murder of innocents. These decisions will be necessary in order to reach the goal of seeing your family.
Throughout the story you will discover how the regime where you are and its evil plans works. Sometimes you will see how experiments are carried out that can hurt the sensitivity of many users, such as police brutality in prisons. You will go through different arenas and challenges that you will have to dodge.
Design and game style
Ministry of Broadcast is inspired by very old games such as Price of Persia and Oddworld: Abe’s Exoduos in terms of the mechanics it includes. The design is undoubtedly very beautiful in 2D and quite pixelated that takes us to another era but allows it to be moved perfectly on a mobile. We must bear in mind that this is a game that was initially developed for PC when it was on Steam but that it has ended up being carried.
We are facing a very classic platform game that is set in overcoming obstacles, jumping over them and running, escaping as well as facing significant falls of several meters. All this can be quite reminiscent of the system that Prince of Persia used in its origins for the different levels. Actually it is not something really complicated to control and if you are a lover of platform games you will find a very good experience.
Controls and their problems
Obviously when a game is based on another that is quite old, problems arise today. This arises after having tried games with better movement and especially better jumps. This is where the big problem lies since when you have been playing for a while you will see how many jumps are very frustrating.
Removing this, the controls are very simple, since by the position with which the mobile is held in a normal way, by pressing on the left you can move by holding down the screen and making a swipe to the side where you want to go. In the case of the left side with a simple touch you can jump and interact with objects. The truth is that it has few mechanics beyond this since it is only based on dodging the objects that you find.
Puzzles and dialogues
In addition to jumping around the world, there is also the mechanics of doing different puzzles throughout the world to go through the level and the arena. In reality, those that arise are really simple and in the end they are decisions that you must take over the course of history but always under the watchful eye of the regime’s cameras. These puzzles include the interaction with levers, the sacrifice of some of the people you meet or making use of the character’s momentum to be able to cross great distances.
As mentioned above, dialogues also play an important role in the game experience. You will see that the story is quite important so that you can get into the story that we have discussed previously.
Get the full set
In the App Store you can find a part of the game totally free, but this is not the totally complete game. It can be said that we are facing a simple DEMO that shows us the benefits of this game in a first level where the story is presented and shows some of the mechanics and puzzles. But if you want to make the complete purchase you can do it from within the test by making a single payment of € 7.99 .