Need to Know

I'm playing the Mac version of this game, and while the premise is really intriguing - basically a mix of Orwell and Papers Please - the gameplay itself is bogged down by a mindnumbingly clunky interface. Clicking anything takes a couple of seconds to register and animations move at a snail's pace, which can be frustrating when you're running against the clock on some missions. In addition, the interface is cluttered with a lot of unnecessary items, leading you to have an entirely too small space for handling the actual game itself. However, the biggest offense the game commits is that it is way, WAY too vague about what it actually wants you to do. I usually skip tutorials as I'm pretty good at picking up on the general stuff of how to play most games, but this is one of those games that REALLY needs some better signposting explaining what it wants you to do. Apart from that you've got typos, pop-up windows you cannot click out of - forcing you to label someone as safe or threat before having the chance to go over the evidence - as well as straight-up crashes. Even the audio settings don't work, as the music is blasted on max regardless of if I even turn the volume bar all the way down. The music itself is decent enough, electronic hacker tunes. It's such a bloody shame, as there are clearly some really good ideas underneath it all. Interesting commentary on unrestricted governmental overreach and what invasions of privacy can be justified. However, all the technical issues and dumb interface decisions makes an otherwise great premise into a chore to play through. The game is newly released, and hopefully the above issues will be fixed in future patches, but as of v. 1.05 the game is still too broken to recommend.

The concept of the game reads nice: A blend of the retro-style discover-the-errors game "Papers Please!" on one hand and of the "Orwell" series which requires you to peek into citizen's lives for a surveillance organisation on the other. So far so excellent. The basic idea is that you need to collect surveillance evidence in order to catch criminals or have some (in?)justice served. This very idea would leave lots of room for exciting storylines, for obscure interconnectedness of people or secret organisations, for stuff you need to uncover by making sense of coincidences, using a plethora of utilities, spying into their bank accounts, their text messages, mails, criminal records, etc. As a game designer, you might use this opportunity to create individual storylines for at least some of the persons spied onto, you might sanction the choice of "show me the network of person X", if person X clearly has nothing to do with the cases at hand, by just producing an arbitrary number of people with their lives, thereby having one obviously wrong decision yield further problems of managing the data. You might have gone for a rather not-all-parallel storyline. You might have designed a really great simulation, with rewarding solid work and penalising bad work; might have gone for voice acting. This game did not. It does not reward good work. It simply ends once you do bad work. The assignments are simple, but not random. They closely stick to an ever-the-same storyline. No replayability at all. This game does not allow for sympathy for the people under scrutiny, as Orwell might have done. And you will always be heavily restricted in your "analysis" (which does not even deserve this label). A game for the dumb. But the worst thing is the controls and user interface. It is laden with time-consuming, unnecessary stuff which might have been solved a lot better by sticking to minimum standards. It is stressful to play due to its really bad design. Could have been so much more.

Gameplay is lacking, feels overly simplistic and gets dull and boring. Story is also simplistic, not very well written, did not get me involved or gave me any desire to care about the characters in the story. Premise is solid, execution not so much. At most this is a couple dollar mobile game.

1st let me clarify the Early Access part of the review title: After its release, this game still got patched daily or every two days, by the tie i gave up i already had over 24 incremental patches for it on my offline archive and it regularly pop up in my "updated games" notification since then anyway. For me, that reeks early accfess released too early... But without the real commercial warranty that GOG usually offers to customer to cover their purchase ! Now the the core gameplay: it takes on the trendy train of narrative games about citizens surveillance and governement conspiracy, like Orwell (good serie) or Mainlining (decent too), but it missed the whole point... What "Need to know" does wrong is trying to take the small portion of gameplay of previously mentionned games, a portion enough to serve and backup the real point of those games: Narrative. But then, "Need to know" thought it was a good idea to stretch those rather light gameplay parts to ridiculous extent or always-increasing complexity and increased the tediousness of that, thinking it would feel like a "better" gameplay. IT is not: it is overly tedious and feels far-stretched for the sake of filling up with "content". And also add a very slow paced start of the story, to the point you are drowned into fake gameplay, trying to gasp for some narrative fresh air but keep drowning and sufficating... Add the bloated size of the game (installer and installed sizes) for the presentation it offers (it's over 2.6 Gb of compressed installer), the very trope and predictable storyline, the mentioned tedious and unnecessary complicated "gameplay loop" that should rather had remained a support for the narrative and not the opposite... and you have why i cannot recommand "Need to Know" at all... Orwell achieved its purpose with a smaller, lighter, more elegant and smarter way; Mainlining was setting things up faster too. And... it's still patching at least once a week by now... Over 26 patches since release !

The introduction is OK, the interactions through the phone can be fun. But the UI is rather hit or miss. It's not clear what to click to do something or how to close certain windows. Also, WHY is the map scrolling all the time?! It's so annoying, please make it stop. Honestly, I would skip this one and go for Papers Please.