Hi again!

We’ve now rolled into November, beta release month! Our whole month until then will be packed with bringing elements together, finishing touches and testing, so we’ll keep this update concise.

First thing’s first: Need to Know’s beta will be out on November 29.

As mentioned previously, because the game is story-based, this will be more like a very extensive demo, consisting of the full game’s first two (of ten) whole Clearance Levels. It’ll contain elements of everything we’ve been working on since the alpha release, including many improvements to the game’s visuals, more evidence types and powers, a much bigger content database, and the first section of a new story. For backers at higher Clearance Levels, you’ll also start to see some of your personalised suspects and faces in the game, so keep an eye out for your characters!

Perhaps most exciting for us, the beta will include an advanced version of the suspect generator we’ve spent so long building up, which will (we hope!) make the beta significantly more replayable. It’s been some time since we’ve released something new for you to play, so we really can’t wait to share these upgrades!

Programming

In our process of searching through the game for anything we could improve, we managed to massively reduce the build size of the game. By changing how some images are imported, particular for the texture-heavy face generator, we’ve reduced the build size of the game by over 80% - less space, same quality!

We’ve finished implementing your personal employee ‘Timeline’, as shown in the last update, giving you a better sense of your progress through the ranks of the Department of Liberty.

Looking past the beta, we’ve been implementing some new evidence types for later Clearance Levels, like geotracking evidence. Looking forward to sharing more about this as we tweak the animations and visuals!

Writing & Game Design

A list of over 1,300 jobs, complete with realistic minimum, maximum and average salaries. The database will contain even more professions for the full game release, to reflect projected job market changes over the next couple of decades.

Early Clearance Level missions are now more focused and will feel less isolated in the overall story and gameplay experience.

We’ve improved the mission summary interface, to make it both more visually engaging and more intuitive. Unlike the somewhat confusing multi-horizontal scrolling setup we had before, the display is now more guided, making it clearer exactly what part of the review you’re looking at.

It’s important that you feel some achievement as you unlock new powers, evidence and phone apps in-game, and to that end we’ve added in some nice notifications to tell you when this happens. We’ve also added a bunch of notifications all around the game’s UI to indicate changes in the game’s world. In the alpha, not enough was cued visually to tell you what was going on, and so this is one improvement which will help to fix that!

Art design

We’ve added in a new suspect map for the early stages of the game, focused on a smaller part of the USA - we’ll have to keep you in suspense as to where it is, though!

In-game conversations are currently being re-styled to make them more immersive, by overlaying them on the interior space shown in-game. Rather than talking in a rigid dialogue box, conversations now visually take place in the game’s world.

Sound

We’ve also revised quite a few of the game’s sound effects, and we’re super happy with the results - we love the new sound effects for making decisions in particular. Previously, your interactions with the in-game phone were more-or-less silent, which is no longer the case. The new phone soundscape adds quite a bit of tactility as you browse through it.

Backer poll 12 update

We’ve received some helpful, insightful replies on the most recent poll question, and have decided to keep it running until our next update, which will be out shortly after the beta release. At that point, we’ll release a new question that relates directly to the beta, but until then, keep your thoughts and suggestions coming in!

There’s so much for us to work on in the coming three-and-a-half weeks, but for all of our work departments, it boils down to two tasks:

1) Complete the beta;

2) Get it as polished and fun as possible for you all.

Until the 29th, that’s all from us - see you again very soon for the beta release!