THE COMMON EYE

A surveillance critique game set on Boston Common.

You sit at a rooftop terminal overlooking the oldest public park in America. Your employer, Beacon Hill Analytics, has 47 cameras trained on the Common. Your job: identify civilians from their data trails. GPS pings. Purchase history. Bluetooth heartbeats. App traffic. You see it all.

Profile them. Flag them. Earn your commission.

But by Level 10, the system turns on you — and you discover that User #999 is your own data profile.

Two Roles. Two Sides.

☠ DATA BROKER — Profile civilians across 10 escalating levels. Cross-reference clues from the Target Brief against the crowd. Flag the right person, earn commission. Flag wrong, lose money. The crowd grows from 6 to 22 people. By the end, you'll question every data point you collected.

🛡 DATA PROTECTOR — You used to be a broker. Then they sold your mother's medical records. Now you fight back. Race against an AI broker cursor to shield civilians before their data is harvested. Every person you protect keeps their privacy intact.

Features

• 10 levels with increasing civilian counts and difficulty
• Intro cutscenes with unique storylines for each role
• Procedurally generated crowds — every playthrough is different
• Boston Common setting with recognizable landmarks: Frog Pond, Make Way for Ducklings, Soldiers & Sailors Monument, Park Street T
• Full DualSense / PlayStation controller support with haptic feedback
• Keyboard + mouse support
• Synthesized ambient soundtrack and sound effects
• Final score grading system (S/A/B/C/D)
• Protection Report showing the real-world impact of each person you saved (Protector mode)
• Developer's note connecting gameplay to real data broker industry practices

Controls

Action	Keyboard	DualSense
Move reticle	Mouse / WASD	Left Stick / D-Pad
Fine aim	—	Right Stick
Scan / Shield	Click / Space	Cross (✕)
Flag target	E / F	Square (□)
Dismiss	Q	Circle (○)
Intel panel	Tab	Triangle (△)
Menu	Esc	Create

About

Built as a Northeastern University course project exploring surveillance capitalism and data brokerage. The game uses mechanic-as-message design — players become complicit in invasive identification before the surveillance is turned back on them.

Boston Common was chosen because it is the oldest public park in America, historically a site for free speech and assembly. The game critiques how digital surveillance now harvests these public moments at scale.

"In the oldest public space in America, no one is anonymous anymore."