We Become What We Behold Game

We Become What We Behold is a short interactive satire about the news cycle, made by Nicky Case. You play a photographer standing in a town square, framing a camera viewfinder around whatever shapes catch your eye and snapping a photo to "publish" it on a newspaper front page. What starts as a calm scene of circles and squares quickly spirals into something much darker as your choices about what to photograph start changing what the shapes actually do.

There's no score to chase and no way to lose in the traditional sense; the game runs for a few minutes and tells its story through what happens to the town as you keep clicking the shutter. It's less a game to master than a short, pointed experience to sit through once and think about afterward.

Controls

Move the viewfinder with the mouse and click to take a photo. That's the entire input scheme — every consequence in the game comes from what you choose to point the camera at.

Tips

• Try playing it "straight" the first time, photographing whatever seems most dramatic in the moment, before thinking about what a different approach might have done.
• It only takes a few minutes to finish, so there's no harm in restarting and making very different choices to see how the outcome changes.
• Pay attention to the newspaper headlines your photos generate — they're the game quietly showing you the effect of what you just chose to publish.

It suits anyone who wants a quick, thoughtful break rather than a long session — closer to a short story than a typical browser game.