If you’ve been following my work over at AdventureGamers.com, you know that since 2015 I’ve been reviewing a series of alternate reality games by Montreal-based developer Alice & Smith called The Black Watchmen, which casts players as an agent of the eponymous agency as they fight paranormal threats around the globe.
A few days ago, Alice & Smith launched a Kickstarter to fund a spin-off hacking-sim game called NITE Team 4. Set in the universe of The Black Watchmen, NITE (Network Intelligence and Technical Evaluation) Team 4 specializes in cyber warfare and the cracking of hardened digital security systems. When they need to get “up close and personal” with a target, NITE Team 4 strike teams are dispatched to carry out infiltration and data extraction in the field.
As you might have already guessed, it sounds a lot like titles such as Uplink and Hacknet, but with the potential for real-world ARG-style interactions and a more realistic focus, as much of the terminology is said to be based directly on NSA documents leaked by Edward Snowden. TBW players are already familiar with the command-line-based STINGER hacking platform, and it looks like NT4 will flesh out STINGER while adding some arcade-style minigames into the mix, which you can read more about in my AG.com write-up following the NT4 public alpha release a while back.
Impressively, the Kickstarter received 50% of its funding in less than 24 hours, and the numbers continue to climb. If NITE Team 4 sounds interesting to you, check out the official Kickstarter page or the game’s official web page.
