[REDACTED]
A downloadable game
[REDACTED] is a document investigation game. You're a government analyst assigned to a basement office with a CRT terminal and 847 documents in your processing queue. Your predecessor left under mysterious circumstances. Your boss says to ignore his notes in the margins. She also says not to open anything marked PRIORITY REVIEW. As you file paperwork, you start noticing things. The same names keep showing up. Dollar amounts match across agencies. A classification directive is hiding binder clip receipts. A journalist asked questions and everything got classified. A social worker tried to help a trafficking victim and was shut down in 24 hours. Something is very wrong. The system is designed to make sure nobody puts the pieces together. - 100 government documents — FOIAs, travel authorizations, financial disclosures, whistleblower complaints, sealed court filings - Cross-reference board — connect names, dates, dollar amounts across agencies - Redaction challenge system — file formal challenges with legal justification and evidence - Trust system — the terminal watches how you work - 3 acts — from routine paperwork to conspiracy to countdown - 5 endings — file, leak, challenge, invoke the hidden provision, or walk away - CRT terminal aesthetic with procedural audio - Your predecessor left notes in the margins. Read them. EARLY ACCESS — Acts 1–3 complete with five endings. Expansion content coming. The system survives on silence.
Purchase
In order to download this game you must purchase it at or above the minimum price of $3.99 USD. You will get access to the following files:
Development log
- ORIENTATION MEMO — NEW ANALYST INTAKE17 days ago
- OFAR-WS-07 — Day 1 Patch30 days ago
Comments
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I'm so confused by this that I switched browsers wondering if something wasn't showing up.
I feel like there's some major game mechanic I'm missing? At first I was just arbitrarily guessing on how to request declassifying different fields, not really understanding what each one meant, then I suddenly was no longer getting documents that I could declassify. The documents started alluding to conspiracies and things to search and things that were related but I didn't know what to do with it. Those two numbers are the same, okay. The notes in the margins keep telling me to follow this or that, but all I can really do is click one of the tags, go to the cross-reference board, and say, yep, I saw those documents in the past. Suddenly I was in Act 2 and my access was upgraded to secret, and then suddenly my list of documents got shorter and shorter until there were none, and there was nothing to do. I have tokens that I don't know what to do with and a trust rating that doesn't mean anything to me yet. I'm supposed to remember names and numbers, but I can't figure out why. I was told to search a number once I get secret clearance, but nothing seems to happen. I reeeeally want to like this, but I just need my hand held a teensy bit more here, because so far it just feels like conspiracy soup.
Hey shemx, this is incredibly useful feedback, thank you. You're not missing a secret mechanic; you've identified real gaps in how the game communicates its systems.
Quick orientation: the redaction challenges are the core loop — each black bar can be contested, and your success depends on (a) picking the right exemption basis for that agency/doc type and (b) having cross-referenced enough related documents to build a case. The cross-reference board isn't just a log. Connections there actively strengthen your challenges.
The inbox going empty in Act 2 shouldn't happen. And the search not triggering anything after your clearance upgrade is something I want to look at. Can you tell me: what number were you told to search, and roughly what document mentioned it? That'll help me track down exactly where things stalled for you.
Right now my inbox says
PROCESSING QUEUE: No documents pending. ... 782 items remaining
TM-2024-003 4.4 says "Documents containing references to personnel actions may display additional margin content when viewed in conjunction with the referenced personnel file." but I don't know how to view things in conjunction with each other - am I supposed to be able to see two documents at once? I see a lot of docs with green redactions I can't click, white redactions I can only click, and black redactions where the cursor changes to a DO-NOT symbol.
I was told to look out for DS-ADJ-2019-4401, which gives me nothing in the cross reference board. 2020-CR-00189 has some connections. CR-2020-0291 mentioned searching for REQ-2019-88712 and that document does come up, but I don't know what to do with it. Oh, and SYS-CLEARANCE-UPG-002 has a tag called "second playthrough" that leads nowhere.
I can challenge the following documents:
- TA-2018-4491
- CR-2019-0847
- IAM-2020-0718
- FD-2019-0023
And that's it. Everything else that comes up is fully static and un-interactive. CR-2019-0847 has one of those black boxes I can't do anything with, and TA-2018-4491 and FD-2019-0023 both have big bright green redactions I can't do anything with. The cross reference board is just a list of tags with documents attached to each one, I'm not sure if I'm supposed to be able to actually link them through some UI function. I don't know what the priority tokens are for (to forward to Pryce? But I'm unclear on what even I'm supposed to send) and I'm unclear on the exemptions, the reasonings (what public record am I contradicting? What's Aggregate Disclosure N/A? How long until a Time Based Declassification? I sort of understand Overclassification and Public Interest Override, I think.)
Also, WB-2020-0091 has an extra long green bar that is too wide for the interface. Not sure if that's intentional.
I'm glad my comment was helpful, and that I didn't come off too harsh. I'm looking forward to experiencing the story, and I was legit bummed that I couldn't figure out what I was supposed to do. It's a game for four documents, and then it just becomes, open document, file, repeat.
Thank you for this. The 'second playthrough' tag is a dev label that should not be visible to analysts. Patch incoming this evening. The green bar overflow on WB-2020-0091 is also confirmed and will be in the same build. I'll follow up on the other points separately.
Happy I've been able to help! I will see if the new documentation helps me figure it out.