I’m on Observation Duty: eerie little gems!

Basically “I’m on Observation Duty” is a “spot the difference” kind of game, where you play as someone whose job is to keep an eye on multiple live CCTVs at a set location and send in reports about any supernatural/odd activities.

The locations could be a house, a school, train station, etc. To complete a shift, you’ll need to survive from midnight to 06:00, familiar eh? If you should find any anomalies in a room, for example a flying pineapple, you choose which room the happening is taking place from on a list and try to identify the anomaly that needs fixing.

Then you’ll need to wait for a moment for the fix to happen before being able to report again. If you fail to identify the room and/or anomaly, you’ll lose valuable time. If there are more than 3 active anomalies, your life is forfeit and will have to start all over again. There are no checkpoints or saves.

Controls are simple, you could do everything with the mouse or combine mouse and wasd/arrow keys to switch between cameras. In the third game, you walk around, take pictures and send reports via your cellphone FPS style.

Except from the interesting main menu tunes, the levels are void of background music. Sounds play an important part in noticing some of the anomalies, which usually build up to hint at something happening and most entities will sometimes mumble, breaking the silence and give you a little scare.

There are also some easter eggs to find, which only adds to the mystery of it all.
Who is Tomothy? I still have no idea!

The Good

It’s fun to play and really keeping your eyes peeled and brain going. There are plenty of anomalies to find, not all of them will trigger during a round and after a while you’ll become paranoid and everything seems to be changing. To my surprise these games have quite the active fanbase and will probably attract a bit of a younger audience. Some will stick around and enjoy the struggle and occasionally play along! I noticed a traffic of new viewers while playing this series.

The games aren’t the most advanced or heavy, you could screen-share the games with your friends and feed each-others paranoia on stream!

The Bad

Quite often someone will start pointing out all the anomalies since they know all of them by heart. That takes away the challenge of the game, but if you’re all about backseat gaming it’s a fun and nice way to engage with the viewer without much effort.

Levels can be quite tricky, some of the details are very small and cranking up the brightness of the game is usually recommended. The game can become very tedious if you’re struggling with a certain location.

For last, I’ll add a nudity warning and some, as it is somewhat NSFW.

About the I’m on Observation Duty series

Currently there are five games in the series, all having the same gameplay and mechanics, except for the third instalment, which plays as a FPS and is VR compatible.

Farris

Long time mystery and adventure enthusiast! Kind of old-school game preferences and crusty.