Here’s a free visual novel about Communist Poland

It’s short, sweet, free, and depressing.

When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.Here’s how it works.

Want a nice, sort-of-depressing visual novel about Communist Poland to round out the year? Do you want it to be free? Of course you do.

In Martial Law, you play a lower class man who’s left behind by the government of Warsaw Pact Poland. Trying your best to take care of your daughter, he wants to try and have a better lift. It’s a classic visual novel setup, with plenty of endings to find and issues to solve and/or not. I called it depressing earlier, but there’s a happy ending if you want to go looking for it.

It’s also pretty educational, with lots of information about big-C Communism in 20th century Poland. Per the developers, it’s meant to “visualize the realities of Polish families back then, their ways of thinking and understanding the world.” I’ve read a bit about the era, but I still learned a lot of neat stuff while playing.Martial Law was first made as a game jam entry, but later extended into a full game to give away for free. It also works on Linux which I know will appeal to a certain set of people reading this here web site.

You can findMartial Law on Steam.Try not to fall asleep in a snowdrift. Or do. I’m not your boss.

The biggest gaming news, reviews and hardware deals

Keep up to date with the most important stories and the best deals, as picked by the PC Gamer team.

Jon Bolding is a games writer and critic with an extensive background in strategy games. When he’s not on his PC, he can be found playing every tabletop game under the sun.

The reigning Pope of 1-bit mystery games is back with a Halloween treat: a haunted house game you can play in your browser

Return of the Phantom, which is basically The Phantom of the Opera but with time travel, is free on GOG

Co-op survival game Icarus is celebrating 153 consecutive weekly updates by giving you a flamethrower and a free weekend