Communism will get a big ‘ole spotlight soon when George Orwell’s classic book will be adopted into a adventure-tycoon game for PC.

Animal Farm was recently announced as a project that’s currently in production by a bunch of “industry veterans” who will take the game and its concepts based on the book that saw farm animals mimicking the structures of Soviet-era Communism with a capital ‘C’.

Blues picked up the press release from over on the official website, where they offer a very basic rundown of the concept they’re going for, while leaving no opportunity unmolested to mention George Orwell’s name.

According to the press release the game will be an interactive journey through Animalism, and the tough choices that come with it.

The press release seems terribly self-aware of the harms of Communism, despite the fact that the gaming industry seems to have been moving ideologically toward the authoritarian state in a fast-moving way since 2012. Even still, the developers note that Communistic endeavors and absolute authoritarianism can be dangerous tools when applied indiscriminately across society, stating…

“When George Orwell’s seminal novel Animal Farm was first published in 1945, it was seen as a critique of Soviet Russia. But as an allegory of absolute power and totalitarian authority, both a needle-sharp satire and a terrible warning, it has proved to have timeless and universal significance. ‘Power corrupts; absolute power corrupts absolutely’, one of the many lessons in Animal Farm, is as relevant today as it was at the end of the Second World War”

The developers have received the blessing from the Orwell estate to adapt the book into a game.

With the medium as enriched as it is with the widely diverse set of tools afforded to creative-minded individuals, this project could turn out in any way imaginable or unimaginable. A lot of it will boil down to the art direction, gameplay depth, and overall story pace.

They don’t have a name yet, but some of the developers working on the project are alumni from The Witcher 3, Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture, Alien: Isolation and Mafia III to name but a few.

I’ll reserve judgment on this project until some screenshots or a trailer arrive. For now, it’s an interesting concept announced during a time when Anarcho-Communists such as Antifa have made national headlines battling with National Socialists. So maybe a game like this is more timely than you might think.