I'm on Observation Duty 5

About I'm on Observation Duty 5

I'm on Observation Duty 5 was made by Notovia and released in May 2022 for Windows, Mac and Linux. Its makers call it the biggest Observation Duty game yet, with six unique levels, and play will be familiar to anyone who has tried the earlier games.

Your job is to monitor live surveillance footage and spot anomalies. You swap between camera views of rooms in each location, from a house entrance, living room and parlour to a director's office, a conference room and subway tracks, all in grainy black and white with a timestamp in the corner. An anomaly can be a piece of furniture that has moved, an object that has appeared or disappeared, or an intruder or ghost.

When you notice a change, you file a report with the right room and type of anomaly to fix it. Anomalies appear at random, so you never know what comes next; leave too many unreported and the game is over. The goal is to last from 00:00 to 06:00 in game time, and its makers say the horror comes mainly from the paranoia of not knowing what has changed, with some scary monsters along the way. The store page notes some corpses and mild nudity but no graphic violence or gore.

It suits patient players with sharp eyes who liked the earlier games or The Exit 8.

How to play I'm on Observation Duty 5

1. Buy it on Steam and run it on Windows, Mac or Linux.
2. Pick a level and flick between the camera views of its rooms.
3. When something has changed, file a report with the right room and type of anomaly.
4. Keep the number of unreported anomalies low and survive from midnight to 6 am.

Tips

• Study each room carefully at the start of the night; you need to remember how it looked.
• Cycle through all the cameras regularly rather than watching one.

Questions