Release is the end of one story and the beginning of another - this is a game that doesn't appeal to everyone, but one that it appears you can fall deep down the rabbit hole with. One of the most popular ones for competitive play, Hecker says, is essentially just an open rectangle.

The levels themselves give you some idea of the minutiae that go into playing and developing this game: they're simple in the extreme, usually with a single architectural element to work with. There are also brand-new visuals that look a little like The Sims with a touch of Hitman, and six new levels that are available now. I've been watching SpyParty go through development for years without ever really ginning it up to play, but the Steam release will come with both matchmaking and an extensive tutorial, the latter of which I played in a hotel room at GDC - I even had a hard time shooting the computer-controlled spy when he was wearing a name tag, to give you some indication of how hard this can be. The game has been fine-tuned for developer and community for eons, and it's nearly time to widen that community. For a project that's burned through Hecker's life savings over its extensive development period, that prospect is both daunting and, for obvious reasons, exciting. By way of comparison, there are about 67 million people that use Steam. SpyParty hasn't exactly been unavailable despite not being on Steam: Hecker sells it through, where he's sold 24,000 copies at $15 a pop. Or maybe they're acting a little too much like a computer? That's the game, in a nutshell. It sounds simple, and it is. The spy must mimic the actions of an NPC even as they go about deliberate actions, the sniper must determine which of these characters is exhibiting human characteristics.

What follows is an immense, overwhelming and complicated psychological minefield played out in a dozen simplistic moments. The sniper is sitting outside the party and watching through a scope - it's their job to figure out which character is the spy and kill them with their one, single bullet. The spy is set down in a little party full of computer-controlled characters and given a series of tasks. It's an asymmetric competitive multiplayer game where one person plays a sniper, and another person plays the spy. For those just joining us, SpyParty is one of the most unique, strangest games on the market.

Spyparty sniper tips