Monomyth Games

Factsheet

Developer:
Monomyth Games
Based in Adelaide, Australia

Release date:
August 28, 2018

Platforms:
Windows / OSX / Linux
Steam
GOG.com

Website:
needtoknowgame.com

Regular Price:

Description

Welcome to the Department of Liberty. You must spy on citizens, pick apart their private lives, and determine how dangerous they are. You can also resist these suffocating privacy invasions by aiding underground groups and leaking internal reports to the media. Or, you can just use all of that juicy classified information for your own, personal gain. Your call. Need to Know emphasises story, and will sculpt the crushing growth of our real-world surveillance society into a meaningful, gripping journey. It critiques the system by passing the uncomfortable (or too comfortable?) mantle of power onto your shoulders, and testing which choices you’ll make. You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, you’ll sweat bullets under the searing blaze of an interrogation lamp.

History

Early development on Need to Know was started in late-2014, when Tristram and Quincy decided that the concept would lend itself well to a complex narrative, along with compelling gameplay and design.

Features

• Clearance Levels – Everything hinges upon your Clearance Level. Impress your superiors, and they will promote you to a higher level, unlocking cooler (and creepier) powers, classified information, and prestige.
• Surveillance – Early Clearance Levels only allow you access to a target’s metadata or browsing history. As you progress, you bore deeper into their lives, with geo-tracking, shopping patterns, and even drone surveillance.
• Individual targets – Your Department database is packed with citizens’ profiles, with colourful biographies, human flaws, and realistic dilemmas.
• Executive powers – As you ascend the ranks, you are forced to make increasingly unsettling decisions. Will you fuel your rise to power with searches, wiretaps, smear campaigns and abductions? Or will you covertly undermine the Department from the inside?
• Personal life – Choose whether to use intel and powers outside of work, whether to help others, for financial gain (not, strictly speaking, legal), or even in romantic encounters (not, strictly speaking, moral).
• Chapter-based storytelling – We intertwine gameplay with story structure, for satisfying payoffs, real character progression, and to eliminate grinding.
• Meaningful moral choices – No morality meter, and no 'Good/Evil' decision moments. Instead, actions cause in-game consequences that actually matter. Your choices can lead to bombings, false arrests, corrupt bankers escaping prosecution or even (gasp) your own demotion.
• Classified data – Each new Clearance Level exposes classified data, much of which will help you with assignments, and in your crusade against (or for) the Department.
• Assets & Prestige – As your salary grows, impress and intimidate peers with new homes, phones and more. In too many games, you rise to the peak of every possible rank/guild/achievement metric, yet even the lowest peons still treat you like a nobody. Not here.

Need to Know Credits

Quincy Geary
Technical Director, Programmer

Tristram Geary
Creative Director, Writer

Byron Son
Composer, Sound Designer

Alison Reinglass
Art Director

Contact

Inquiries
media@monomyth-games.com

Twitter
twitter.com/MonomythGames

Facebook
facebook.com/MonomythGames

Web
monomyth-games.com