

Play simply by using your mouse to interact with the screen. Small icons will pop up when you move your cursor over certain objects or people, and you can click to take action. Your primary tool is the com device in the lower right corner of the screen, which you can not only use to receive calls, but also to search for "air tags"; electronic signatures embedded in your environment that can help you find clues or provide more information. The game only saves between story scenes, so you might want to wait for a break in the action if you plan to stop for a while.
The goal is ultimately to figure out who you can trust to give the information you're carrying. Someone who will "do the right thing". Starting with Lucas, you'll speak to each of them and play through earlier events in their days that have lead them to where they are now. They all have reasons to hate the government and the Curfew, but is that any proof that they wouldn't turn you in given the chance, especially if doing so might help them? At certain intervals in each person's story, you're given the chance to ask them questions that will influence how they view you. Showing concern, empathy, and cleverness might cause them to trust you more, while asking stupid or insulting questions could cause their opinion of you to plummet.
Analysis: The Curfew has been pinging away on my radar for some time now; if there's one thing I love, it's intelligent social commentary, and The Curfew manages to make you think while it entertains. Kieron Gillen, who handled the writing, skirts up against the edge of painting a world too comic book-ishly overblown to be believable or relateable, occasionally forgoing genuine emotion for flash and cartoonish villains. Then again, it's relatively easy to dismiss the setting as being far-fetched when you've been lucky enough to live in a place and time where your rights have never been compromised. As futuristic as the setting might seem, there are some clever touches that bring the whole thing uncomfortably close to reality. The anti-homosexual propaganda slapped on a building. The condescending treatment of lower-class citizens. The outright unfairness and suspicion heaped on foreigners. We might not be "there" yet, but not everything about it is as far-fetched as it appears on the surface, which is an unsettling thought.
As a piece of interactive art and a commentary on civil liberties, The Curfew is top notch. As a game? Not so much. The minigames aren't much fun, and besides being clunky to play, don't fit well within the game itself. Is forcing us to fiddle with a wobbly slingshot really more effective than ye olde "use slingshot on security camera"? It's really more story than game, since there aren't any real puzzles to solve, and you're kept on a fairly narrow set of rails the entire time. It's hard to really get a sense that you're having any sort of impact on the story. Thankfully, now that it's out of beta, the game plays a lot more smoothly and has shed most of the painful bugs that dogged its initial release.
Of course, there's no denying that the end product looks amazing, typically very well acted with interesting characters and a great soundtrack. The way the separate stories each person tells you begin to intertwine and influence each other is interesting to watch and handled quite well, and there's a wonderfully wry sense of dark humour present. The environments are very well done, and the semi-futuristic devices you'll see actually aren't all that unbelievable in an otherwise familiar setting.
One of the worst things you can do with your life is to not only forget how lucky you are... but to ignore how unfortunate other people may be. Even with its flaws, The Curfew is still worth checking out. Maybe you're lucky enough to be in a position where your rights have never been violated. Maybe you've never thought about what you would do if they were, or what happens to people who have been on that side of the coin. Maybe you should.
Thanks to RedRevolver, Mike, Jackson, and Andrew for sending this one in!
I'm not even sure if this qualifies as a "game"....
Is it just me, or should the load times for this game be measured in geologic time?
Aaaand rage quit during the slingshot mini-game. I was interested up until that point.
I think the loading time for this game is atrocious. I feel like I'm using dial-up while playing it.
Yeah, but it is a great quality game. If a little politically charged, maybe.
I can't get past the second scene in Aisha's story...
Also having problems with the molasses-like load times. Still haven't even seen the game.
The load time and the gameplay itself was excruciatingly slow for me. The lag in the game itself was unbearable.
I'm stuck on Aisha.
Beat the gamer-dude, but missed a single bonus in the second round.
If you're stuck a the burger place, for Aisha...
Load times weren't so bad for me - apparently very slow at first, but the bar shot up after that and the scene loaded ok.
Massive bug, however:
Got the first phone call, had the option of who to speak/listen to. Noticed I could look more closely at the tv if I wanted to, so I did. Bizarrely, I could not click "return" in the top left - the mouse pointer actually 'twanged' around it. I could not move the pointer on that button; it would get close and then teleport to the opposite side of the button. The only way I could make the mouse pointer fall onto the button was to click and drag it, but then as soon as I released the mouse to make a click it failed again.
I quit, which is a shame because it looked like there was going to be something decent here
Buggy; I sometimes can't return from a zoomed in view. I gave up the 2nd time this happened.
Cristal Castles in the soundtrack orz
The problem I'm having with this game is that it seems to take up so much of my computer's memory that it lags. Everywhere. At all times. For everything I want to do. I gave up during the slingshot minigame because the lag was so terrible I couldn't see where I was shooting.
Maybe if I could download the flash file, rather than having to stream it online, it would run better. It does look very interesting.
Am stuck on Aisha, there's no 'return' button from a zoomed-in scene. I'm really enjoying this game, so it's a real shame I have to stop now.
Has potential, but, buggy+load_times=too_bad.
Im at the street level and got 2 bonuses but stuck on 3rd. i can see a bucket with the viewer but dont know what or if to do something with the bucket. need spoilers
I hope a walkthrough is in the works. :)
I got to the end and chose the person who trusted me the most, and then it seemed I'd 'won'. Not sure if that was because I'd got the most trust of 'said person' or I just picked the right person.
The other three all either ignored the data or handed it in.
After viewing all 4 alternate endings, I'm actually really disappointed. I'd seen the adverts for this game on Channel 4 and always thought it had looked quite good, but after spending a good few hours on this (most of it waiting for loading...) I ended up still not knowing much about the whole game. A clear 'win' sign at the end would have been nice.
I just wish a piiiiiiiiiinch more effort had been put into it, because it almost seems like it's 'there'. Like why for example, in a game about a CURFEW, is it about noon as far as the sun and light goes when I was just told by the screen that it's 30 minutes from curfew at night???
Great game, but the lag is tough and the game has crashed twice on me already...thank God for autosave
KS, I haven't even gotten THAT far yet. I am stuck in the VERY first room with her. Found one bonus. Nothing else is clickable (except for one, but it does nothing).
Another fun screw up: I was going through one person's story, clicked on a clue and got another character's narration.
Fought my way through lag to Leah in the office.
Now the CCTV hack thingy + the lag is my downfall.
Any help?
Well, that was fun! Is there only one "right" ending, or does it depend on your answers? In any case, I chose well =)
It seems to me that this game could benefit from a download option to avoid the loading time issue. I think it's easier to wait for one long download rather than a number of mid-game interruptions.
Mostly I didn't mind the railroading, except when it becomes too obvious that you've got no control. I suppose that's because the questions have to be based on the flashbacks, but still, I'd like to see more complexity in the choices.
Love the Orwellian atmosphere! =)
Long comment is long and wordy...
Never mind. Found the answer on TheCurfewGame's YouTube site, in the comments:
Of course, now lag is just f-ing me in the next part. Grr!
Liked the little hint on who to pick.
Bug in Leah's 3rd flashback:
GRRR.
With the exception of that awful slingshot minigame, and a couple buggy spots I hit (the most notable being Leah's minigame showing up in Saul's story and then spectacularly crashing my browser), I thought this was a fantastic game/story. I found myself completely immersed in these stories and caring about the fates of these characters. I will say that I found who you give the data to kind of obvious after interacting with everyone, but I actually didn't really mind it. A piece of advice to anyone just starting the game is
I also think the story's whole arc is really nice with the addition of each character's experiences. You get to fill in pieces and get new points of view. Is it possible to play the characters out of the left-to-right order? I didn't try it, but it seems like the overall story wouldn't be as good if you were able to.
I seem to be stuck:
wow this game loads so slow and the third loading bar I get doesn't even appear :( . heck, it looks like going to be interesting, too bad they don't look forward real game maker with optimization in mind to do theirs stuffs.
Gah! If a game is slow and lags then it should not have timed minigames.
I was very fascinated by this until I got to Aisha's third flashback, zoomed in on the one clickable area, and found I couldn't zoom out. Soon as this is fixed, I'll go back.
@HopefulNebula : that means you have to do something there to push forward.
I finished the game and the endings make me :( . Spoiler alert!
Some thoughts and possibly some hints:
On the endings
On playing right-to-left
On what you learn from Saul (MEGA-SPOILER)
For the camera hacking
I found the game lagged as well, but not so badly that I couldn't complete it.
I wish I could skip a lot of the video scenes.
I wish the game didn't hurry you out of a scene if you advanced the plot before finding all the bonuses.
I'm replaying to try and get endings I missed.
I thought it was okay up until the slingshot and by that time the loading and the lag had destroyed my patience so I stopped and very much doubt I'll play again to see what happens.
To me this would have been a great game if they just went the point a click game route with the little minigames. Now it just seems like they spent all the time filming and creating the game and at the last minute remembered they were doing a game not a scifi movie and just added in some of those sidebar games and called it a day.
I didn't get much into the story part but what I saw just seemed like an average science fiction story about toleration governments. Which is more than you usually see in games but the lag and almost biblical loading times kept me from getting interested enough to keep playing.
Overall it was an interesting story and concept with spectacular production for a free web game that was rendered somewhat unplayable by lag and badly done gameplay mechanics. It was still an excellent effort and I almost would have preferred it to be a short film than make a weak attempt to be a game, but I'll still wait and see what the studio comes up with next and hope they put as much time into the game part as they do into the art and story.
I have played through the game, chosen all 4 people, and after reading all the comments here, I believe Tom is right on the money.
If you don't want to read the endings I got, then read no further. But I got 2 good and 2 bad endings with the same save game.
Some questions about the game.
I enjoyed this one, and only encountered the super long loading screen once or twice (didn't have any lag). Tigritra's comment above really helped me get started.
OK, I was stuck (see above), but after quitting, restarting and loading my game, it worked OK... (I have to agree though - I hate timed sequences).
Good Ending for Saul
The Curfew - Walkthrough
It looks like a really good game. I can't get it to load though:(
Nice game! Ever since Channel 4's great game 'Bow Street Runners' two years ago, I've been looking forward to what they would produce next and this one didn't disappoint.
And it's nice to see some familiar faces too...the actor (Ian Shaw) who plays Shamus here is the same one who played the pubkeeper in 'Bow Street Runners'.
Thank you Tom for the walkthrough!
Without it I wouldn't have been able to...
Just a few minor corrections for Tom's walkthrough:
As for the game, it is absolutely brilliant. True, the loading times are very long at first, and they do keep me from playing it a third time, but everything about the game is absolutely amazing. The acting is above what I would expect for a web game, even from an established company, and the graphics are just gorgeous and very realistic although obviously computer graphics. But a lot of effort and love has been put into this and it shows. All of the characters are completely believable, and especially the four main characters play their role beyond and above what I'd expect. But it seems they all have an acting career, so in hindsight not so surprising.
I can't even manage to
Help!
Same as Steve, can't even find the very first airtag! so frustrating!!!
I can't find Lucas' airtag to save my life. Suggestions?
i wont complain about loads and bugs in a free game lol. im not an ass.. but i made it all the way to the bathroom cleanup with saul and now i cant figure out how to leave the bathroom lol.. is this s glitch? help please :P
ok when i go to the terminal in the burger bar and i enter the perfectlyrespectablecitizen909, it keeps saying user not found. please help!
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