République: Episode 4 - God's Acre

God's Acre is the fourth episode of République, a crowd funded stealth game released in episodic format. It is acquired as an in-app purchase and requires the previous episodes to play. It was released around a year after the previous one and for the first time simultaneously for the mobile and PC platforms. It starts right after the events of the previous episode. When Hope uses the elevator and reaches the surface, she finally manages to escape the Metamorphosis complex where the game was previously set. She ends up in a dark environment with many trees. When she approaches a gate, she is knocked down by a new character called Mammoth, a giant caretaker with a split personality.

While the core elements are still in place, this episode is for many areas also very different from all previous ones. There is an entirely new environment with larger and outdoor locations, such as a graveyard, a crypt, a large hedge maze and different high tech laboratories. The Prizrak soldiers of the previous episodes are replaced by Mammoth, the single enemy in God's Acre. He roams through all the environments without a fixed path and cannot be defeated, making him a constant threat. Hope can still avoid him using small passages and using regular cover. When he catches her, he beats her unconscious and she has to start over. There are no fixed hiding places and Mammoth has very sensitive hearing. Running almost always draws his attention. There are birds that can scare Hope and make her scream. The environments also have plants that attract bees. When Hope runs into them accidentally, her screams also draw in Mammoth.

There is also something different about Hope, as she is no longer referred to as 390-H, but 390, and now suddenly has a wondering, childlike naivety, as if she has lost parts of her memory. Cooper is no longer there to contact the player and he is replaced by an anonymous helper. Being outside has caused errors in the OMNI View interface. There are constant glitches, even though the core concept of using cameras to examine the environment is still present. Most other functions are now no longer accessible, such as the in-game map, opening and closing doors, hacking electronic items and so on. The only thing that is left is using a new camera function to take pictures of certain objects in the environment, which act as intel for the anonymous helper and trigger audio logs. These mostly focus on two new characters, the Israeli and Iranian scientists Noam Peretz and Abal Ammash. The logs, combined with scrambled petri dishes as a new type of collectible, explain how the scientists were involved with setting up the project, mostly focusing on DNA manipulation, along with the Pre-Cals as well as a new type of entity known as Mirrors. This episode also reveals more about Prideaux and Zager.

Collectible items for this episode are the photographs as intel, banned books hidden in the environment, and Zager tapes. There are no game cartridges and also no items like the pepper spray or the taser. Up to seven TVs can be discovered, with short segments about genetic manipulation and DNA encoding. There are some small puzzles to solve. One has the player piece together a voice message using different samples and another requires the quick entry of a PIN code in a race against time. In the hedge maze different types of valves need to be located. In this episode it is not possible to travel back directly to the locations of the previous episodes, but it still possible to reload the latest checkpoint for each one.