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!

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.

Someone described this as a mashup of The Guides, Blackbox, and Device 6 - which is a pretty apt description. Overall, the puzzles are easier than The Guides, and there isn’t the relentless emphasis on code-breaking from that game. It uses the motion sensor and device settings like Blackbox, but takes it to another level of engagement. It shares some puzzle elements with Device 6 and much of the paranoia as well. I’m impressed with how sophisticated but ultimately intuitive the puzzles are. It’s not a flawless experience however; sometimes it crashes, the soundtrack shuts off, and the controls and animation can slow down or freeze up. A reboot fixes it every time. It’s an ambitious game, and for that reason, I’m willing to overlook some of the bugs.