Not Tonight starts at the end, with the London Eye snapped and bobbing in the Thames, and political party Albion First in control. You are a bouncer taking tickets at the British Museum of History celebration party until – suddenly – it blows up. This is dystopian Britain; this is Brexit.
After the explosive beginning, Not Tonight rewinds. Your story begins in a rubbish-strewn hovel of a flat covered in xenophobic graffiti. You are a European housed and controlled by an oppressive government, and you must work to earn enough money to keep you from being deported.
Not TonightDeveloper: PanicBarnPublisher: No More RobotsPlatform: PCAvailability: PC, Mac and Linux this summer, and consoles shortly after
Everything you do is monitored by the Nazi-like Albion First and embodied by Officer Jupp, your overseer. Your phone is issued by the party and the apps controlled by it, and the one you’ll need most is BouncR, which offers you work.
Door work is the nuts and bolts of Not Tonight, the lens through which you’ll discover creator Tim Constant’s vision of post-Brexit Britain. People queue for establishments and you let them in depending on varying criteria, which scales up to racial profiling and difficult decisions later in the game. It’s very Papers, Please, the award-winning game about border control by Lucas Pope, only you’re checking clubbers’ IDs and tickets rather than passports and visa papers.
Not Tonight Reveal Trailer Watch on YouTube
When you begin, your tasks are simple. You check dates of birth to make sure people are over 18, then either counter-clicker them in or hand back their ID to turn them away. But the complexity ramps up quickly and soon you will be checking all parts of an ID: age, expiry date, photo likeness, hologram authenticity and nationality.