Beholder is a detective game where you spy on tenants in a building, discover their secrets and report violations of laws to the authorities. As the game unfolds and you see more of the controlling totalitarian state, an uneasy tension develops between your conscience and your mission. How the game ends depends on your choices.

In the first game, you play as Carl, a government-installed landlord in a totalitarian state. Your main task is to secretly spy on tenants to hear their conversations. To do this you can bug apartments, search their belongings and profile them. You then have to report to The State anyone capable of violating the laws or plotting subversive activities against the Government to the authorities.

Each character has a unique personality, circumstances, and issues. Every decision that a player makes affects the way the story unfolds. The game has multiple endings each of them being a sum of the decisions made by a player. It's up to you whether you decide to play along with the powers that be or look to subvert its control.

In Beholder 2, you play the son of the man who has been killed, Evan. It's improbable that he flung himself out of a window and to the ground from a high rise. Instead of spying on tenants like the first game, you work directly for a corporation. Here though, you find just as many immoral people and actions - co-workers who are drunk, participate in orgies, and engage in all sorts of debauchery. You have to look out for yourself while keeping the company happy, and investigating your father's unhappy end.