Fun fact: today is the 75th anniversary of George Orwell’s allegory Animal Farm first being published in the UK. And today, a group of indie developers announced they’ve teamed up with the estate of George Orwell to adapt the novel Animal Farm into a video game.
With a vintage aesthetic for the visuals, and narrated by Abubakar Salim (Bayek from Assassin’s Creed Origins), Animal Farm uses an adventure game format to put players in charge of the titular farm, listening to the various animals’ desires and trying to balance fulfilling those desires against keeping the place running and defending from other farmers. Whether you’ll turn out to be another Napoleon or not is entirely up to you.
Developing the project is a partnership between The Dairymen, comprised of Andy Payne (Just Flight and AppyNation founder) and Imre Jele (Bossa Studios founder), and Nerial (Reigns series). Speaking for The Dairymen, Jele had this to say. “Animal Farm is a literary masterpiece that uses deceptively simple language to accurately describe the downfall of communism from the dream of equality into totalitarian oppression. The fate of the farm was all too real for me growing up in totalitarian Hungary. History seems to repeat itself. And once more, Orwell’s classic has become a painfully relevant warning as some Western democracies started using tools and language eerily similar to those of oppressive regimes of the past. I’ve long wanted to explore how, through video gaming, we could design an experience that immerses the player in Orwell’s vision, and in Nerial, we found the perfect partner to make this happen.”
Nerial founder Tamara Alliot added, “When we got the opportunity to work with Imre, Andy, and the estate of George Orwell to bring Animal Farm to a gaming audience, we grabbed it with both hands and set out to make a game that truly honours Orwell’s parable. We were able to bring our genre experience to the project thanks to Reigns, and writer Emily Short was excited to adapt the text and use her narrative design prowess. Emily has painstakingly studied Orwell’s text to ensure authenticity and verisimilitude.”
A teaser trailer has been released. Animal Farm is tentatively scheduled for release sometime this fall.
