Play as a MI7 Hacker in this Cyber Espionage Simulator

On November 4, 2015, the controversial Draft Investigatory Powers Bill (aka the "Snooper's Charter") was debated in the UK Parliament for the first time. In the months since its introduction to Parliament, the Snooper's Charter has been widely criticized for its many overreaching provisos, which include requiring communication service providers to retain users' internet connection records for one year, allowing law enforcement officials to view these records without a warrant, permitting law enforcement officials to carry out "targeted equipment interference" (i.e., hacking into a device to access its data), as well as obligating service providers to assist in the interception of user data.

While the Snooper's Charter is certainly a bad omen as far as the future of digital privacy rights are concerned, it also makes for an awesome gaming experience, as the Mainlining "cyber espionage simulator" is wont to demonstrate.

Slated to be released by Rebelephant for PC in October 2016, Mainlining is a novel take on the classic point-and-click games of yore. You play as a newly-recruited hacker working for MI7 (the now defunct British secret service organization which predated MI5), and thanks to the adoption of the BLU Pill Act by the UK, you have unrestrained access to all online personal data. Your main objectives are to correctly identify perpetrators and secure their arrest, as well as having collected enough evidence prior to their apprehension to ensure a maximum sentence.

Although there is only a short, free demo of the game available to play so far, I finished the teaser feeling thirsty for the full release. Its retro, 8-bit aesthetic is coupled with a killer soundtrack, and there's a bit of a learning curve in terms of figuring out how to actually play the thing. Once you've got that under control however, tracking down the offender is a challenging in all the right ways: it requires you to act quickly enough to apprehend the criminals, but not so fast that you'll miss crucial pieces of evidence or apprehend the wrong person. And perhaps most importantly in light of the game's ideological underpinnings, it requires you to use your moral judgment to decide how far you're willing to go to bring the perps to justice.

Overall I'd hate to call Mainlining 'fun' given its subject matter, but what the hell—completely violating people's digital privacy in the name of 'justice' makes for an uncomfortably good time. So as the battle for digital privacy rages on, whether it's in the halls of the UK Parliament or the headquarters of Apple Inc., Mainlining feels like the game we'll need to combat the mass surveillance we don't deserve.