Thank You Britnet Media for submitting this game through our Steam Curator! The FED in-universe stands for Federal Extremism Department. Their goal is to go undercover in online forums and chats to monitor suspicious individuals. Anything that points to something such as domestic terrorism can get them arrested. Monitoring 16 individuals over the course of many days to put as many criminals or would-be criminals behind bars. Each day begins with reporting to your boss and he tells you some details such as how many suspects are left, or that you’re allowed to give the go to arrest if enough evidence or suspicion is given. Outside of the computer are low-poly 3D graphics. They have a charm to them as you can look out the window to see the cars pass by or a window cleaner scaling the building doing his job. You’ll notice your co-workers walking about and chatting among themselves. Controlling your character is a bit strange as the controls are very sensitive, but fortunately, you don’t have to deal with them often.

Logging on to your computer, you’ll have access to multiple menus. There is a news app to look at, a streaming service called Comfy, a tips section, and a chat app where you interact with the many suspects. In chats when you message a person, you have a menu that has a bunch of predetermined questions to ask them, such as their interests or what their opinions of you are. Each interaction with a person is one hour of in-game time and some characters are only active during certain times. If you want to tail a specific person, you can pass the time with the Comfy streaming service.

There are also additional choices within that can either get them to trust you or convince them to make more radical choices if their interests and views lean in that direction. Usually, if a person gets to the point of committing a serious crime such as DUI or robbery, you can have them arrested, and that removes them from the chat logs. The predetermined questions can often contradict themselves as you’ll ask someone if they like you as a friend, and they’ll say yes. Then you choose a choice that depends on them believing you’re a friend just to say “sorry, I only do that with someone I consider a friend." I’m pretty sure it’s considered a bug because of the way choices are programmed. One of the other buggier mechanics is the investigator that shows up later that can assist in monitoring the suspects. If you happen to not choose anyone for him to spy on, the game will crash. As saves are only manual, this nasty bug can potentially set you back a long time.

After some time, I reached a couple of softlocks. One of them was that no one was progressing in a way that I couldn’t have anyone else arrested. Another more serious one was one where after my shift was over, it kept looping back to 7 AM where no one was active, meaning that my save file was considered unwinnable. In terms of moral warnings or concerns, there isn’t much to keep in mind. As everything is through chat logs, there is no violence seen. For a game like this, I expected to see a lot of swearing or unsavory language, but I came across nothing of the sort surprisingly. Unless you count zoomer language as unsavory I guess because there is lingo such as “hecking” and “based.” There are some mentions of drinking as a hobby or interest of a random character. The worst thing that could be seen in The FED is the option of gaslighting. It might even be the “correct” thing to do as you can constantly egg a person into committing something bad, and then arrest them for it while permanently deleting your chat logs. Your boss in a way even encourages this behavior. I don’t exactly know how to feel about The FED. A simulation like this is admiringly “boring” to do as I’m sure it is in real life with its repetitive nature and days of little to no progress. I can’t exactly criticize it for that, but I can criticize it for the number of bugs present and the unintuitive menu navigation. If these bugs and controls ever get fixed, maybe I can see someone interested in government or agency work liking this. As of right now, it’s best to pass on this one.