Mass Surveillance Thriller Game Need to Know Receives Endorsement from Edward Snowden.

With a tweet of endorsement from the controversial whistle-blower Edward Snowden, it follows suit that Need to Know is a controversial game. In a scenario not overly unlike Papers, Please, the indie title sees you in the shoes of a government employee, faced with daily moral dilemmas.

Art imitates life. https://t.co/L9YQraARRJ https://t.co/R4HUZyoyTP

— Edward Snowden (@Snowden) February 10, 2016

The game describes itself as a "surveillance thriller sim" and there's not many games that can do that. You are an employee of the Department of Liberty and your job is to spy on citizens to determine if they are dangerous to national security or not. How you do your job though is left entirely up to you. You could follow the instructions of your superiors to the letter regardless of the implications, or you could choose to work with underground privacy groups and leak things to the media (sound familiar?) Of course, you could just find out juicy gossip on the rich and famous to sell to the newspapers. There's no "right" way to play the game and that's what makes it so open ended. 

As you progress through the game, you get moved to higher levels of security clearance, giving you access to more information with higher confidentiality levels. The developers have tried to make the moral choices meaningful. With this in mind, don't be surprised to find that you have to power to improve or ruin people's lives in the game. Or even to end them if necessary...

The title managed to obtain its full funding request on Kickstarter within just over a week and currently stands at $64,300 AUD versus the target of $29,000 AUD. There's still 19 days to go, so the addition of stretch goals is a very real possibility, the release is pretty much confirmed now though.