The Company Game

The game is amazing. No doubt about it. I’ve only spent money on iPhone games for this and two other apps, but this still was by far my best purchase. I love the whole gimmick and most of the puzzles are truly challenging. However, I’m on level ten of the new SAIL part (which I was so excited to have come out!) and I think there might some sort of glitch, for two reasons: One, ***SPOILER WARNING*** the M File doesn’t work after going in only twice. (Though I’m pretty sure the dev is aware of that because of the “if crash” message that always pops up.) Secondly, level ten is impossible for me to pass. Either that, or I’m being painfully stupid. I’ve gotten no little green dots next to levels, except level nine, which opened the box in the M File. The thing, when I try to translate the dots inside of shapes, only works for the one dot inside of the square. Well, to be more precise, none of the other shape and dot combinations work, except for all those involving the square. ***END OF SPOILERS*** I don’t know if this is a glitch (and to be honest, I hope it’s not, so get I can have that nice “aha!” moment when you figure out the answer) or I’m missing something, but I’ll keep trying. Overall, though, amazing.

I love puzzle games like this! So I end up playing a lot of them, but one thing I thought was pretty cool and really made this one stand out was the incorporation of little games within the game, if that makes any sense? You need to complete them to move forward so I'm not sure if I can call them mini games, but they were definitely different from what I'd usually see in this kind of game. Like cryptography and all that kind of stuff. And as someone who is does a lot of cryptography and not a lot of strategy puzzle games, it presented a completely different kind of challenge for me and made the gameplay pretty unique and interesting! The use of AR, while a little glitchy sometimes, also really contributed to that and made the experience even more engaging. The Mona Lisa puzzle I thought was especially cool. Anyways, I'll definitely keep an eye out if there are any more updates in the future!

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There are some seriously interesting uses of the iPhone’s technology at work here that I haven’t seen done elsewhere. However, there’s a reason for that: such usage is incredibly invasive. For example, the game will suddenly start flashing your phone’s camera light or require you to change the date/time settings on your iPhone or maximize the volume, etc. I was luckily playing at home but if something like the camera light flashing happened in public it would have been a problem, and having to change the settings of my phone is a bit uncomfortable. Ultimately, I decided to call it quits when the game asked me to “run.” I live in an apartment in a city, and while I tried running back and forth a bit (as well as trying to trick the phone by shaking it, etc), nothing worked. There’s really nowhere for me to go “run” and frankly I have no interest in trying to make it happen. I think it’s an unfair ask of the player, a situation where the game’s cleverness gets the better of it. So, kudos for the concept, there’s some serious outside-the-box thinking here. I don’t think this really works in execution, though.

Definitely a great game, in a similar vein to “The Guides” but making more use of environmental factors and sensors. Big fan of the gameplay and the story, though the story could be a little more developed. Puzzles were a great level of difficulty, most requiring only a few minutes to crack and those where I got stuck would usually come to me in a “eureka!” moment after a few hours. One suggestion - **spoiler alert** - changing date/time settings on a device isn’t great for those of us with corporate integrations that freak out when you do something like that. I had Exchange calendar troubles for days after solving that puzzle. It also might not be the best or most accommodating idea to have puzzles that require physical activity - what about disabled players? Otherwise, great effort and I can’t wait for the next chapters!

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**Update - Enter ‘ap1992’ as your name to get past the camera/gps access request. Beware this does change the intended experience. They’ve updated the game description to include mention that camera and gps are required but the website still has no privacy policy page. This kid is gonna be rich, he developed a heck of a game, I’d have given it 4-5 stars if not for the privacy policy missing entirely. _____________________________ The privacy policy is bunk, their website doesn’t list one. I should have read the reviews first and now I’m out $2. If you don’t want to give access to your camera and location you aren’t allowed to play. (Btw I don’t have twitter and your website won’t let me contact you without enabling cookies and JavaScript) After reading the responses to others who complained about this it’s all for gameplay purposes but this should have easily been resolved. 1. You do not need gps to track movement, something people running in place noticed when they couldn’t progress. I have location services disabled entirely and my phone can still record my steps... I’m holding a pedometer! 2. Camera is tricky because it’s for more than simple photos but they have a way to bypass it already so why not let the player opt out at the start with a warning?