Kickstarting an encrypted email game about the Snowden leaks

James writes, "A blend of fact and fiction, players take on the role of an NSA agent tracking down the source of the leaks. They'll discover the journalists involved, and the real messages sent by Snowden to them at the time."

£5 gets you a play-through. James is seeking money to finish the game, and offers his four years' experience as a dev in support of the proposition that he'll succeed. But as with all crowdfunding, there's no guarantee that you'll get anything for your money -- caveat emptor.

Played by email in real-time, Top Secret unfolds over several days. Players email selectors (names, email addresses, phone numbers) to their NSA team and receive surveillance reports on their chosen targets. The player must analyse the intel to choose their next target and follow the trail to the source.

A game about surveillance in which the player is surveilled, every email you send whilst playing the game can be intercepted and read by the NSA or GCHQ. To prevent this, Top Secret supports the encryption method used by Edward Snowden - Pretty Good Privacy (PGP). Players can send and receive encrypted emails from the game which even the NSA can't decipher.

After the release of Top Secret, the full source code of the game, and content-creation tools will be released under the free open-source GPL v3 License.

Top Secret - a game about the Snowden leaks [James Long/Kickstarter]