corpo/ghost

In the near future, corporate accountability has reached an all-time low. A group of vigilantes has created a darknet company offering corporate espionage services to other companies. Discounts are proportional to the revenue of the target company, to incentivize smaller companies to pool resources against bigger ones. To remain competitive, most small companies eventually start using their services, though this is not publicly acknowledged.

Most missions are simple, and do not require intrusion. The remaining missions - due to their difficulty - require additional planning. This planning is crowdsourced - software is made available to a group of hand-picked participants all around the world. Using this software is like playing a video game - participants make their decisions in simulated scenarios. These decisions are then collected, analyzed and may eventually contribute to the planning of a corporate espionage mission.

You have been invited to participate.

Each mission is set in the office/IT section of a building, a few hours after midnight. Only night shift reliability engineers and night watchmen are still in the building. The missions simulate the propagation of light and sound through the rooms, as well as the reactions of employees to various disturbances that might appear.

Your job is to be a ghost - distract your opponents to clear a path and avoid getting caught - all while completing the mission. As you proceed through the environment, it is important to remember that everything you interact with may set off your opponents, and they will investigate. To keep things interesting, sometimes they might even do something unexpected.

To get you out of tough situations, you are given a tool that you will in time regard as your most valuable companion - a device that is capable of emitting strong light rays and targeted sound pulses, and is therefore guaranteed to create powerful distractions for your opponents at the location of your choice - assuming you have a direct line of sight to that location.

The missions are strictly non-lethal, even remaining hidden is not worth the cost.

To facilitate experimentation, the software includes the "Timeline" feature - a way to quickly create and restore save points at any time, allowing different approaches to be attempted for the entire duration of the mission. Save points can be arranged in a map, or in a progress graph, which allows them to be identified more easily.