Cellveillance Review

You play as the manager of a large apartment complex, and to get extra money for your sick mother, you secretly report on the residents. So you place hidden cameras everywhere and almost immediately see a dead body in a suitcase. Do you notify the police or get a nice payday? Other reportable incidents include suicide ideation, assault, secret relationships, theft, and bizarre rituals. Also, somebody in the complex might be a serial killer. Cellveilance was banned in China for voyeurism, but the implied rape scenes are more unsettling. You decide how to act, what to report, and hopefully nobody finds out.

Five women form the backbone of the story and they each have secrets to uncover which makes the story interesting. You will need to visit most branching paths to get the full picture. Although primarily a thriller (70:30), the five are romance options, with tender scenes interspersed and several layered finales. The cast is impressive, with four being genre pros that outdo their previous work (including Love is All Around, Game of Fate 1, and Half Billion: Love Choice). One actress seems to be new to the genre but more than stands up. While the balance between thriller and romance is fine, sometimes it feels like the romantic element was included for convention sake.

The first run through the game will take under three hours, which is a little brief, but Cellveilance is built around its branching paths. There are so many, with hilarious scenes, evil activities, dream scenarios, and insta-fail deaths or arrests. Some continuity issues are present due to the spider-web narrative. And unfortunately you won’t see a happy ending until hour seven because you have to unlock all five character endings (in two stages) before you get the proper endings. And getting there means dancing around the timeline like a madman. Good news, the game tells you what is required. Bad news, you still have to juggle money and karma, which is a pain. All up it will take about 11 hours to see everything. This is good value and worth doing, but still a fraction tedious.

Video quality is excellent, especially if you have 296GB (!) of free space for the 4K videos. Audio is nearly all live recorded and only required a few volume adjustments to reach perfection. Translation is probably the best from EpicDream to date, although it needed minor tweaks. EpicDream have now solidified themselves as the most consistent producers of quality experiences in the genre.