Screenshots
Watch trailer on Steam ↗The Occupation
White Paper Games · Published by Balor Games · Official site ↗
Mixed — 60% positive (413 reviews) · Metacritic 68 · 15 achievements
Last updated 27 Sept 2026
The Occupation is a fixed-time, investigative thriller set in North West England on Saturday 24th October, 1987.
£19.99
Lowest price we've ever recorded
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£19.99
Price history
3 Sept 2026Lowest: £19.99 · Highest: £19.999 Oct 2026
Adventure, Indie · 2019 · More £15 - £30 games
Delve into a chilling investigative thriller set on October 24th, 1987. Explore the fixed-time environment of North West England with White Paper Games' unique adventure experience.
About this game
Your role is to uncover evidence as a journalist by sneaking through restricted areas and questioning people on their actions through a series of one-on-one interviews. All this takes place in a detailed, systems-driven world where people will react to your actions and where time is your biggest enemy.
At White Paper Games, we focus on world’s that feel lived in through non-linear spaces and objectives that can be solved with multiple approaches. We love games with a strong narrative drive that tackle important social issues and aim to set that standard within our own work.
We understand not everyone plays for the deeper narrative experience, and for those that like the idea of trespassing, breaking into secure locations and hacking 4 digit codes, we have plenty of rule breaking opportunities to take advantage of in the world of The Occupation
Instead of creating a feature list, we wanted to highlight the cool work our team of 9 have created over the past 4 years of development.
Time is a precious resource to us all. Every minute in the game is a real-world minute and The Occupation is played over a fixed time length so make sure your actions count. Your watch can be used to set alarms and timers to help keep track of important objectives such as time delayed safes so you don’t have to hang around whilst security is searching for you somewhere you shouldn't be.
Wherever you live, the chances are you’re in a country that could be run a little better, where trust may be feeling a little low. You may not care how their decisions impact you and you instead continue with your daily life ignoring the distracting scaremongering. Or, you may be actively involved in trying to create true change. We love that, in most countries, people have a choice in this, and that’s how we wanted to approach The Occupation’s gameplay design. The world is open for you to explore and it’s up to you what threads you find interesting and wish to follow in the world.
Daniel Hillben and Steven Crow are the security guards employed by The Bowman Carson Group and will be around to monitor your activity to make sure you’re not doing anything you shouldn’t be. Daniel Hillben has been with the Bowman Carson Group for many years so try not to get on the wrong side of him. You may have seen the acting work of Steven Crow in advertisements such as ‘Warts Away’ or ‘The Restorer’; Steve is working this security gig to pay the bills but his real aspirations lay in Hollywood.
Whether you chose to break into a office through the window, find an ID card or pull the power to the room, we designed the world to accommodate your choice, approach and need to interact with objects you may or may not need for your research.
Sincerely, if you read this far and enjoy the work we create, thank you. We put everything we have into these game and we really do appreciate every person that invest their time and hard earned money into the games we create.
- The White Paper Team
At White Paper Games, we focus on world’s that feel lived in through non-linear spaces and objectives that can be solved with multiple approaches. We love games with a strong narrative drive that tackle important social issues and aim to set that standard within our own work.
We understand not everyone plays for the deeper narrative experience, and for those that like the idea of trespassing, breaking into secure locations and hacking 4 digit codes, we have plenty of rule breaking opportunities to take advantage of in the world of The Occupation
Instead of creating a feature list, we wanted to highlight the cool work our team of 9 have created over the past 4 years of development.
Time is a precious resource to us all. Every minute in the game is a real-world minute and The Occupation is played over a fixed time length so make sure your actions count. Your watch can be used to set alarms and timers to help keep track of important objectives such as time delayed safes so you don’t have to hang around whilst security is searching for you somewhere you shouldn't be.
Wherever you live, the chances are you’re in a country that could be run a little better, where trust may be feeling a little low. You may not care how their decisions impact you and you instead continue with your daily life ignoring the distracting scaremongering. Or, you may be actively involved in trying to create true change. We love that, in most countries, people have a choice in this, and that’s how we wanted to approach The Occupation’s gameplay design. The world is open for you to explore and it’s up to you what threads you find interesting and wish to follow in the world.
Daniel Hillben and Steven Crow are the security guards employed by The Bowman Carson Group and will be around to monitor your activity to make sure you’re not doing anything you shouldn’t be. Daniel Hillben has been with the Bowman Carson Group for many years so try not to get on the wrong side of him. You may have seen the acting work of Steven Crow in advertisements such as ‘Warts Away’ or ‘The Restorer’; Steve is working this security gig to pay the bills but his real aspirations lay in Hollywood.
Whether you chose to break into a office through the window, find an ID card or pull the power to the room, we designed the world to accommodate your choice, approach and need to interact with objects you may or may not need for your research.
Sincerely, if you read this far and enjoy the work we create, thank you. We put everything we have into these game and we really do appreciate every person that invest their time and hard earned money into the games we create.
- The White Paper Team
System Requirements
Will my PC run this? →Minimum
Minimum:
- Requires a 64-bit processor and operating system
- OS *: Windows 7 64-bit
- Processor: 2.2+ Ghz Dual-Core
- Memory: 4 GB RAM
- Graphics: NVIDIA Geforce GTX 560 or equivalent
- DirectX: Version 11
- Storage: 7 GB available space
- Sound Card: Yes
- Additional Notes: For foreign languages, please set Windows Keyboard language to UK / US English to type passwords inside the game.
Recommended
Recommended:
- Requires a 64-bit processor and operating system
- OS: Windows 10 64-bit
- Processor: 2.6+ Ghz Quad-Core
- Memory: 8 GB RAM
- Graphics: NVIDIA Geforce GTX 970 or equivalent
- DirectX: Version 11
- Storage: 7 GB available space
- Sound Card: Yes
- Additional Notes: For foreign languages, please set Windows Keyboard language to UK / US English to type passwords inside the game.
Supported Languages
English*, French, Italian, German, Spanish - Spain, Korean, Polish, Russian
*languages with full audio support
*languages with full audio support
Latest news
Press Coverage
Investigate your neighbours in The Occupation devs' new mystery
After snooping around offices in The Occupation and memories in Ether One, developers White Paper Games will soon offer the opportunity to snoop around a neighbourhood . During E3 they announced Conway: Disappearance At Dahlia View, where we'll play a former detective in 1950s England who falls into spying on his neighbours after the disappearance of a young girl. The announcement trailer remind me a bit of Hitchcock's Rear Window, spying on people out his flat window. Have a look for yourself below. Read moreRead full article on Rock, Paper, ShotgunPress Coverage
Have You Played The Occupation?
Have You Played? is an endless stream of game retrospectives. One a day, every day, perhaps for all time. Would that doing a games journalism was about sneaking around the offices of a big company, stealing people’s answerphone tapes and rifling through their private documents. Sadly it is not, but The Occupation is! (more…)Read full article on Rock, Paper, ShotgunAnnouncementsOfficial
The Occupation demo is out now!! 🕵️♀️🕵️♂️
{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/31400775/346d43af30cfde2678676e18179c8a2f8672bf51.png We've just released the opening hour of The Occupation on all platforms to give you a taste of the detectivey, thriller gameplay we have in store. If you've not managed to pick up a copy of The Occupation yet, we'd love for you to check it out & let us know your thoughts! We will have more fun updates incoming very soon (did someone say OST? ;) )Read full article on Community Announcements (Pete_Bottomley)Patch NotesOfficial
The Occupation receives a major update including a Chapter Select feature
Since the launch of The Occupation on March 5th, the White Paper team has been hard at work listening to player feedback to improve the gameplay experience. On launch, The Occupation was praised for its innovation and gameplay however was hindered by the bugs which is something we wanted to work hard to improve for our player’s experience. With this major update, we’ve included a number of features and bug fixes in response to the feedback we received. New Chapter Select Feature We wanted to make sure we listened to the community and addressed all the issues. We then went to work after listening to the number one requested feature since launch - the ability to replay a chapter of the game. We’re proud to say, this feature now exists and is accessible after completing the game. A video of the update can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JiFMP_Bz84c&feature=youtu.be The rest of the patch notes can be found on the forum which include 5 new quality of life improvements along with 12 bug fixes. So far we've seen a really positive response so we want to thank the community for their continual support. The team have worked incredibly hard on the stability of this patch with a lot of long days so if you've been waiting to jump in, now's the time whilst it's 20% off! Thanks again for the incredible support - we'll continue to listen to feedback to make The Occupation the best game it can be! Thank you from the whole team!Read full article on Community Announcements (Pete_Bottomley)Patch NotesOfficial
Patch Notes 1.2.0
https://steamcdn-a.akamaihd.net/steamcommunity/public/images/clans/31400775/8f1e317b19b6d4194692a509207dd0a9d3e6611a.png Hey all! We've been working hard on fixing any issues that have arisen since launch and we're incredibly happy with this latest patch 1.2.0! The patch includes: Greatly improved stability of AI characters. Fixed an issue which made AI characters leave floating objects behind. Fixed interaction issue with briefcase which could cause you to lose items (swapping floppy disks in the pockets) Fixed a large number of level based issues in all levels: collision issues, traversal issues, lighting and art issues, etc. Fixed issue where collected Vinyls do not appear at the end of the game in Harvey's apartment. Added a message in the final Harvey Apartment level to clarify the purpose of the level. Fixed an issue with reel swapping and the RAU's that could cause the player to lose/lock a reel. Fixed an issue where keys bound to screen lock, dossier, pager, watch and pause game all prevent the actual key from being passed through to the keyboard if it's bound to 0-9. Fixed an issue where keypads only show 3 digits when used by AI. Fixed an issue with 'Cloak and Swagger' - you can now restart a level if you're spotted and still unlock it with that savefile. Fixed interaction with folded notes where prompts appeared backwards. We're constantly checking the forums so if you spot any issues please do let us know and we'll be sure to take a look! In the mean time we'll be working on the next update. Thank you! - The White Paper TeamRead full article on Community Announcements (Pete_Bottomley)
