It’s October 1st, 2049. Two corporate big-wigs have just been assassinated in a helicopter crash, and all the clues to this mystery have been left scattered across a fake, future successor to Wikipedia.
Neurocracy, released last week, is a narrative murder mystery that takes place entirely across the entries of Omnipedia—a future take on the free online encyclopaedia. Buried between entries on reality TV shows, neural implants and fatal diseases are clues hinting at foul play behind the deaths of the two executives.
While you can have a crack at solving it yourself, the developer has put together an official discord server for would-be sleuths to brainstorm together. Even still, there’s a voyeuristic delight to poring through this fake future, the same joy you’d get from picking up Skyrim’s books or a BioShock audio log.
That’s not an accidental comparison, either. In a blog post, writer Joannes Truyens explains that the idea for Neurocracy came from the kind of background stories you’d get through emails and fictional newspapers in games like Deus Ex, “all of which suggested a world much larger than what was rendered for the game or exposited in dialogues.”
Neurocracy’s story will take place over 10 weekly episodes, which will see the sight add new pages and edit existing ones as the mystery develop. All 10 episodes will be available for £15, with Episode 1 free for everyone right now over at Omnipedia.