I really wanted to like We the Revolution. As a French historian with a legal background, the chance to play as a judge on the Revolutionary Tribunal was quite literally a gaming dream come true. I am also a huge fan of Papers Please and the parallels between the two games piqued my interest even more. I followed this game intently over the past year and bought it as soon as it came out. I cannot recall the last time I was so excited for a release. Unfortunately, I found the final product to be extremely underwhelming.

As others have noted, the writing lacks polish and at times sounds as if it was translated into English. Although the developers released an update the day after the release fixing some of these problems, the launch version contained many typos and grammatical errors. This is an especially glaring problem for a text-driven game such as this.

The main problem, however, is the crux of the gameplay. Acting as a judge on the Revolutionary Tribunal is neither as fun or as interesting as it could be. I was expecting that you would have physical documents to analyze and the ability to call witnesses with branching lines of inquiry where going down one path might open the way for new questions and foreclose others. Instead, you get questions by playing a mini-game that involves matching a topic to a category such as accusation, chain of events, victim, etc. Questions do not flow logically – indeed, you can ask them in any order and it seems to have no effect on how the jury assesses the case. Worse, each question tells you before you even ask it what impact it will have on swaying the jury. The result feels very artificial. You lose immersion because it doesn’t feel like you’re questioning a real witness, but rather unlocking pre-packaged responses that have a pre-determined impact on the jury. If you successfully unlock all the questions in the mini-game, the jury will reach the same conclusion every time. You have no ability to sway the jury towards your preferred resolution other than simply not asking certain questions. Your only real choice as a player is whether to follow their recommendation. As others have also noted, this makes the game more of an exercise in just trying to keep the factions from wanting to kill you rather than making difficult moral choices.

The developers seem invested in this game and willing to listen to player feedback. This is a good thing and gives me hope that We the Revolution can evolve into something great in the future. However, there’s a lot of work to be done and as it stands now, I cannot recommend this game.

This is a very unique game, clearly inspired by Papers Please, but thankfully for me without the frenetic pace with which you make decisions at. Which is not to say the game isn't difficult. Decisions aren't obvious and it's bloody hard work manipulating people and playing at politics. Which, this game is probably one of the better political simulators I've ever played, as you're truly trying to win friends and influence people.

If you don't, your head is going to be rolling off the guillotine in no time.

Taking the role of a judge in Revolutionary France, just as the National Convention is elected into place and the Reign of Terror is imminent. The cases that come before you are varied and have wide ranging consequences. You can't please everybody. Your verdict will have various effects on the opinions of the common people, revolutionary factions, the jury itself if you ignore their wishes, and the prosecutor. Rarely do each of these groups want the same punishment. Thus you find yourself in a precarious balancing act. In the meantime, there are figures plotting against you as well, and after judging during the day you find yourself fighting a clandestine opinion and political campaign at night, trying to gain influence over the people and defeat machinations and rumors aiming to discredit you and make you a target of the revolution.

The cases are wide and varied, and increasingly more political. You'll judge men who are clearly guilty of rape, burglary, and various other crimes, but are common folk sympathetic to the revolution. Sure, you can justly send them to prison or even execute them, But almost everyone will be displeased. And of course there are various aristocratic defendants who are guilty of nothing than being born in the wrong place at the wrong time. But you have a job to do.

Overall, I've found the game extremely enjoyable, and a true hidden gem that deserves more publicity. Please note that the gameplay is very barebones. You're going to be reading a lot of text, and mostly making decisions that effect the game state. My god though is it enjoyable if that's up your alley. The story is fun and interesting, you can't ask for a better setting for this type of game, and this game is clearly a labor of love. While I haven't finished the story, I have absolutely no problem strongly recommending this game. I can only hope this developer continues forward and builds off this wonderful game. I've never before seriously reviewed a game here on Steam, but this game deserves it, and I wish for success on this title.

"We. The Revolution" is like a sampler quilt of game mechanics, providing the player with some interesting diversions whilst progressing through a linear story over which the player has little control. The game has some initial charm, quickly overwhelmed by frustration at the arbitrariness of the random and scripted events that decide the course of the game.

The game is set in Revolutionary France, where the player character is nominally a judge. Most of the game mechanics centre around a courtroom:
- A very frustrating matching game where the player must assign clues to somewhat arbitrary and inconsistent categories, in order to unlock questions for ...
- A question selection game, where each question, as well as providing information, tilts the jury towards guilt or innocence, followed by ...
- Selecting a verdict, where each outcome will improve or decrease relations with various factions

As with most of the game, what appears to be weighty decisions "Do I execute the King of France?" have no actual effect on the gameplay other than increasing or decreasing factional relationships. Even factions only matter if the relationship is low enough to end the game, or high enough to score a bonus on some other arbitrary mechanic. Support the people, the revolutionaries, or the aristocracy - the story will play out exactly the same. No game events, let alone the outcomes, appear linked to these relationships. Good relations with a faction provides no protection against them attacking you.

No matter who you please, no matter whether you succeed or fail at any part of the game, your younger son will be murdered by the revolutionaries, your older son will hate you, your wife will try to kill you, and your allies will work against you only to reveal their betrayal at the appropriate plot point.

Any illusion of control you establish will be quickly undermined by the game introducing a plot development that rips away your apparent progress through the introduction or removal of mechanics. Even if you carefully build up your influence with a character, they can suddenly die or turn against you because the plot demands it.

The game has lovely graphics, an interesting setting, and little else to recommend it.

As others have noted, the writing lacks polish and at times sounds as if it was translated into English. Although the developers released an update the day after the release fixing some of these problems, the launch version contained many typos and grammatical errors. This is an especially glaring problem for a text-driven game such as this.

The main problem, however, is the crux of the gameplay. Acting as a judge on the Revolutionary Tribunal is neither as fun or as interesting as it could be. I was expecting that you would have physical documents to analyze and the ability to call witnesses with branching lines of inquiry where going down one path might open the way for new questions and foreclose others. Instead, you get questions by playing a mini-game that involves matching a topic to a category such as accusation, chain of events, victim, etc. Questions do not flow logically – indeed, you can ask them in any order and it seems to have no effect on how the jury assesses the case. Worse, each question tells you before you even ask it what impact it will have on swaying the jury. The result feels very artificial. You lose immersion because it doesn’t feel like you’re questioning a real witness, but rather unlocking pre-packaged responses that have a pre-determined impact on the jury. If you successfully unlock all the questions in the mini-game, the jury will reach the same conclusion every time. You have no ability to sway the jury towards your preferred resolution other than simply not asking certain questions. Your only real choice as a player is whether to follow their recommendation. As others have also noted, this makes the game more of an exercise in just trying to keep the factions from wanting to kill you rather than making difficult moral choices.

The developers seem invested in this game and willing to listen to player feedback. This is a good thing and gives me hope that We the Revolution can evolve into something great in the future. However, there’s a lot of work to be done and as it stands now, I cannot recommend this game.

We. The Revolution is a story-driven adventure game with strategy elements developed by Polyslash. The game takes place during the French Revolution, and it combines historical realities and characters with fiction. In the three acts, you go through the start of the revolution to its near end.

You play as a judge of the Revolutionary Tribunal, Alexis Fidèle. Your goal is simple – keep your head on your shoulders. To survive, you need to maintain good relations with Revolutionaries, commonfolk, Aristocracy, Juries, and your family members. However, this is not a detective game, as some would expect. You are not there to find the truth. You are there to achieve your own goals, and it is solely on you who you set free, send to prison, or straight to the guillotine.

The gameplay consists of several minigames combined with dialogue choices and reading. As a judge, you need to read a case file, ask questions, and decide your verdict. Another significant gameplay element is a part of Paris, where you need to gain control over the sectors.

As for other minigames, there are dice, persuasion, and battles. The gameplay in the first two acts is quite entertaining as it often brings new minigames and possibilities. Unfortunately, the third act lacks the flow of the previous ones as it forces you to play almost all the minigames, which become monotonous.

The price of 20€ sounds adequate to me as I finished the game in 15 hours. If you lust for more, there is a survival mode that removes the story elements and focuses just on the cases at the court.

Pros

• The story of the game is gripping and contains several plot twists. Sometimes, there are quite humorous situations, especially when commonfolk disrupt the court.
  
• The game offers many minigames that change-up the gameplay in the first two acts.
  
• You never find out the truth behind the crimes, meaning that it relies entirely on your interpretation.
  
• The art style is good-looking, and the soundtrack has a fitting tone to the revolutionary period.

Cons

• Minigames, especially battles, are overused during the final act. It becomes boring because you can win every battle with one strategy.
  
• The relationship with your family does not make sense sometimes. For example, your wife can get angry because you spent one night with your children.
  
• The battles have a random element that can disable one of the five army stances. That can be a problem because your line of soldiers may be useless as they do not do any damage at all.

There are three acts aptly titled as Liberté, égalité, fraternité. Acts last several days and for each day you have two main parts – the court session, and your political activities on the map of Paris.

Court session

During the court session, you need to decide the fate of the defendant. There is always a case file that briefly introduces the defendant, crime scene, witnesses. You may have “proof” of a defendant crime in the form of letters, accounts or witnesses. In the minigame, you need to connect the dots before asking the questions, for example, a knife is an instrument of crime, and the letter is evidence. These questions have an impact on the jury, which gives you their opinion, whether you should let the defendant go, or execute.

There are other factions you have to keep in mind when you decide the fate of the defendants. The Revolutionaries, commonfolk, and aristocracy support their own and vice versa. You need to maintain a good relationship with everyone. The court sessions are my favorite part of the game. It combines good dialogues, interesting cases, choices, and moral dilemmas.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1939643545

After that, you spend time with your family. If you manage to maintain a good relationship with each family member, you get bonuses to reputation from the mentioned factions. To do that, you need to decide what activities you do with them. I found this mechanic unnecessary and dull because the story events change their mood rapidly, and you cannot do anything about it. They also get angry if you spend time with a different family member.

The map of Paris

In the second half of the day, you have a map of Paris at your disposal. There are multiple sectors you need to control with your agents. These sectors give you influence points that you can use during dialogues or court trials.

During the third act, you need to defend Paris. So instead of agents, you put soldiers to these sectors. The battles have three lines for infantry, riflemen, and artillery. At the start of each turn, you decide what tactics are most suitable. There are five of them, from frontline assault to defensive artillery barrage. The opponent has the same conditions, and the goal is to wipe out enemy forces. The battles become overused in the final act, and they do not have any tactical depth.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1939643785

I would not miss this feature. It is an interesting addition in the first two acts, but it becomes tiresome during the last one.

Minigames

As for other minigames, there is a game of dice which is purely randomized. Persuasion during dialogues lets you choose from four options. The problem is that after a few tries, you exactly know which one to choose as it does not change for the entire game.

Survival mode

The game offers a survival mode without any story elements. You are doing cases at court until you die by one of the mentioned factions.

You witness the French Revolution from its beginning to the arrival of Napoleon Bonaparte, as Alexis Fidèle, a judge of the Revolutionary Tribunal. By using various intrigues, you get rid of your opponents and gain more influence and power. Throughout the game, you interact with several historical characters, such as King Louis XVI, Robespierre, or Thomas-Alexandre Dumas. You even can decide their fate during the trials.

Another main plot is about your family. As you progress through the game, you discover more family secrets, which later become more crucial to the whole revolution. There are a few choices that slightly impact the story, but there are not any game changing ones.

I really enjoyed the story as a whole. The characters are interesting, and some plot twists are surprising. It gives you the right amount of motivation to continue.

I found the visuals to be wonderful looking. It often combines the French Tricolor with various situations. Also, the soundtrack has a fitting tone that underlines the revolutionary theme.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1939643956

The game was tested on i5 8300H, GTX 1060 6GB, and 8GB RAM. The game is also playable on an integrated graphics card, in my case UHG Graphics 630, maintaining a stable framerate of 60 frames per second at 1920x1080p.

We. The Revolution is an excellent story-driven adventure combining historical realities with fiction. It has a great soundtrack and art style. The only major drawback is the overuse of minigames during the final act.

This product was reviewed with a key provided by the developer for free.

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I wish there was a middle ground option between "yes" and "no". Preferably several, because this game certainly doesn't deserve an equivocal "no".

This game feels like a more historical take on "Papers Please" and clearly borrows some tropes from it -- the protagonist's family and the need to constantly maintain them with scarce resources, the life-or-death decisions over unrelated people executed in the name of a government you do not particularily endorse, it's all there. Some shades of "Reigns" are also present in that you need to balance the favor of disparate factions. The atmospheric art style and music that I didn't desperately want to turn off enhance the experience. The story is intriguing and tickles my erudition -- I mean, I remember who Lavoisier was, did you? I got to save him from a guillotine, that's gotta be worth something.

Unfortunately, I find the gameplay lacking, and in general it feels like a collection of disparate mini-games only connected by the usage of the same resource counters, and several of them are exercises in "guess what the author had in mind" more appropriate in style to a text adventure than a story-based strategy game, punishing wrong guesses just as harshly as the text adventures of yore did. I particularly disliked the court investigations, which presents this most heavily. The persuasion mini-game, with its running timer, has its gameplay get in the way of the story, where, to play optimally, instead of reading what the protagonist says, what kind of reaction it gets, and gauging what the appropriate response might be, you basically have to memorize a computed optimal course of action and click it in quickly without reading what they say to get anywhere.

As you go deeper into the game, the number of mini-games just increases, and they don't feel any more connected. I don't think most of these flaws can be solved without a significant redesign of the whole game, which is why I won't recommend it.

Might be worth it for the artwork and the story itself to you, if the flawed gameplay doesn't hinder your enjoyment of them.

The "Mostly Positive" score is appropriate one. This is exactly how I would describe my own experience with "We. The Revolution".

On a positive side, first chapter is excellent. Core mechanics (mostly related to court cases) are well done. The game has amazing atmosphere and for the most part, it's very immersive. It's clear that this game try to make a certain point and I think it succeeds at the end.

Sadly, there are some negative things. Game starts dragging somewhere in the middle of second chapter and by the end of third it lost my interest completely. The most intriguing aspects become less and less important and soon, instead of focusing on court cases, you need to focus on managing map, relocating resources and winning battles - which, if done well, would be fine, but sadly this was by far the most dull and repetitive portion of game. The "twist" which I won't spoil is also pretty disappointing. Choices don't seem to have any consequences and there are still few bugs I've killed Devoye and even though his sprite was not present, he still had some things to say during next case, which was quite amusing. Also, I was then informed that he committed suicide, which was even more amusing, but I can imagine it may ruin immersion for some people. Writing is solid, but the story itself feels off, it lacks this special something that makes you feel like it's more than just game. Some events are unbelievable to the point of breaking immersion.

That being said, I still think that "We. The Revolution" is worth getting through and that's why I'm leaving positive review.

Basically "This is the Police" but in Revolutionary France and somehow even less happy. It's great.
Kill people who don't deserve it! Betray people who think you're their friend! Be an alcoholic and ignore your family! Get no credit for the genuinely altruistic things you do!

The game reminds me of "The Police". There is a story that tries to be meaningful but in the end you cannot make any moral decisions, instead you just try to make everyone happy. And since you can clearly see what result your actions will have this is a quite unsatisfying experience.

You do not think: Is it right to condemn this man to death? You just need to consider: Do I need to fill that bar more up or that one?

All in all I really like the idea, but the execution in that game is just not for me, since it is to much about game mechanics and to little about actualy difficult decisions

This is an...interesting game, and its positive sides even end up outweighing the big (and very subjective) flaw in its storytelling.

You are Alexis Fidélé, one monsieur le juge in Revolutionary France. Robespierre's reign of terror is in full swing, and you are in a precarious position of much responsibility and accountability, but little real power. The power you do have is to decide the fate of Citizens brought before your court. Review their case, interrogate them, sign off on the verdict. Sounds simple, but remember that "Reign of Terror" thing? Most of the time, no matter what verdict you'll give, you'll end up angering someone - push any group far enough and you'll be removed from office, in a bloody manner most likely. So you need to balance those interests while trying to maintain court integrity. It's not easy - it's a chaotic time, and sometimes convicting a clearly guilty (and sleazy AF) defendant will make everyone hate you just because said defendant happened to be one of the "Heroes of la Bastille" or some such thing. Or because stealing from and beating up la Burgeoise is apparently okay. And there's also your family who, unfortunately, seems like nothing you do to protect or appease them, considers it sufficient.

Later on, as your status grows, you'll end up tangled in aristocratic intrigues and struggle for influence over Paris, and even cases reaching far beyond the borders of France, while the profile of your cases will steadily become more tense and reactions to it more extreme. You will fry (or acquit, if you can afford it!) some big fish like Georges Danton, Charlotte Corday, and yes, even Louis XVI and Robespierre, as the Reign of Terror shows no mercy on anyone. And this is where the game flops.

About halfway towards the climax of the story, a deep and dark family secret is foreshadowed, and all I could utter to it was "Please no." And I will spoil this, obviously. Turns out you had a brother who allegedly fell in battle. He enlisted in the army after being banished from his home by your father in order to be saved from execution after he beat a man to within an inch of his life. The presiding judge took pity on the guy, and told your father how to save his life. The twerp didn't seem to learn his lesson, so it turns out he literally engineered your entire rise to power (like, including the triumph over Robespierre himself!) just so that he can then destroy you in order to take revenge on Daddy. And no matter how hard Polyslash tried to sell him as a tragic character, it's simply not believable. You don't take a far-reaching revolutionary plot and then make it as if it's all about a petty family grudge.

I am totally okay with the fact that no matter what you do, the story will play out pretty much the same way - after all, you are but one judge, tossed into one of the most turbulent times of history, and one man is simply not enough to turn the tide. That is fine. That is, in fact, even better than allowing you to pull such a stunt. It's life-like, it's realistic. But seriously, why the hell did it have to be executed so badly? A long-lost brother with daddy issues, that's who was deciding on the fate of Paris before Napoleon showed up? Ludicrous.

All that said, it's still an amazing game. Court proceedings will have you on edge, you will be forced to make choices between being lynched by and letting criminals go. Or being lynched by a mob or sacrificing another's head to keep yours on your shoulder. The entire intrigue part of rise to power is also rather fun. Liberté and Egalité are executed very well. It's just Fraternité that's a bunch of bollocks.