The game follows graduate FBI special agent Anne Tarver as she investigates her first case: the disappearance of a boy in rural Virginia.

Scenes transition using real-time cinematic editing, with cuts and dissolves occurring as dictated by the story, to propel events forward and to juxtapose moments for dramatic effect.

She is assigned to investigate the disappearance of a missing boy, Lucas Fairfax, in the fictional town of Kingdom, Virginia, paired with Maria Halperin, an experienced but discredited agent.

After the two narrowly escape a minor cave-in, they return to the site the next day when Maria is accosted by a young teen who takes a locket she wears containing a photo of her mother, Judith Ortega, who had also been an FBI agent.

With it empty, she enters the place through lockpicking and finds a special room that includes numerous case files from Judith's time at the agency, revealing that she had been investigating Anne's father, having discovered a conspiracy within the FBI.

Lyndon Holland joined the project early in development in the role of composer and sound designer and is responsible for creating the entirety of the game's music and Foley.

[8] Upon forming Variable State, Burroughs and Kenny initially pursued a range of game ideas, but met with frustration, deeming early concepts to be too ambitious.

Progress resumed after the developers played Brendon Chung's Thirty Flights of Loving for the first time and found themselves inspired by its creative use of cinematic editing in the context of real-time gameplay.

In combination the team's shared interest in American television and films of the 1990s, in particular FBI noir productions such as Twin Peaks, The X-Files, and Silence of the Lambs, this gave the developers a stepping off point from which they could fashion an original story.

[14][15][16] The Daily Telegraph awarded it 5 stars, saying "It is the game that titles like Dear Esther, Gone Home and Firewatch have hinted at, but in a way that evolves the interactive narrative form way beyond anything we’ve seen before.

"[19] PC Gamer awarded it a score of 72%, saying "A slick cinematic thriller, but interaction is limited and the story loses focus in the final act.

"[20] Caitlin Cooke of Destructoid agreed, saying the game "sadly sacrifices the player's ability to absorb what's happening around them for the sake of cinematics" and that the story "falls apart towards the end".