Beholder 4 turns you into a Ministry man secretly working for the resistance

For ten years, Beholder has made you the worst neighbor in the world: the State's landlord, peeking through keyholes and filing reports on the people you share a stairwell with. Beholder 4 finally flips the job around. This time you work for the Ministry, and you're secretly working against it.

Alawar revealed the fourth game on November 9 as the centerpiece of the series' 10th anniversary. You play a young, promising Ministry official who, as far as your superiors can tell, is diligent, ambitious and fiercely loyal to the State. Behind closed doors, you steal documents, sabotage operations and pass intelligence to the underground resistance.

Beholder 4 scene: a lone official in a white shirt walks through a saluting crowd beneath a giant propaganda screen — Toe the line in public. The Ministry is always watching.

That double life is the whole game. You'll balance a career inside the Ministry against covert assignments that keep getting more dangerous, planting wiretaps, cracking safes, building relationships across opposing factions and destroying incriminating evidence before police raids expose you. As with every Beholder, every decision carries consequences, and doing the right thing is rarely straightforward.

Close-up of a worn New Tomorrow resistance patch with a raised fist on a character's sleeve in Beholder 4 — The resistance has a logo. Wearing it in the wrong room is a career-ending move.

Beholder 4 is in development for PC, and there's no release date or price yet. You can wishlist it on Steam now.

Beholder 4 rally: a young official stands between two silhouetted guards before a giant screen of a saluting officer — Two guards, one rally, and a hero who would very much like to be somewhere else.

The anniversary isn't only about the sequel. Beholder: The Landlord's Handbook is out now on Steam with a 10% launch discount for its first two weeks. It's a digital comic, not a game, dressed up as an illustrated government field manual for apartment managers. Its darkly funny vignettes cover suspicious tenants, surveillance protocols, overheard conversations and the private lives behind every locked door, which is basically the Beholder experience with the guilt outsourced to someone else.

Beholder: The Landlord's Handbook comic panel of a silhouetted landlord at a desk facing a wall of static-filled monitors — The Landlord's Handbook, page one of surveillance etiquette: always check your monitors.

Comic panel of the Beholder landlord with a suitcase beside a massive armored train bearing the State emblem — Scenes from Beholder: The Landlord's Handbook

Comic panel of a black cat holding a mouse as a landlord peeks through a doorway at two dead rats — Scenes from Beholder: The Landlord's Handbook

And if you somehow skipped the one that started it all, the original Beholder is 90% off on Steam through November 24. That's about as cheap as a decade of moral compromise gets.

Four silhouetted women framed against a large red roman numeral from the Beholder 4 announcement teaser — Four new faces. We'll find out which side they're on later.

Beholder 4 is in development for PC with no release date announced yet, and you can wishlist it on Steam here. Stay tuned to GamingTrend.com for our review when it arrives, and for all your upcoming reviews, previews, and gaming news!