Deus Ex Go
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''Deus Ex Go'' is a 2016 turn-based puzzle video game in the '' Deus Ex'' series by
Square Enix is a Japanese Multinational corporation, multinational holding company, production enterprise and entertainment conglomerate, best known for its ''Final Fantasy'', ''Dragon Quest'', ''Star Ocean'' and ''Kingdom Hearts'' role-playing video game ...
. The player uses a touchscreen to move Adam Jensen, a protagonist from the cyberpunk-themed series, as a puzzle piece through a board game while avoiding obstacles and manipulating the environment. In-keeping with the main series, Jensen can hack environmental features such as turrets and platforms to bypass and eliminate enemies. The game follows the format of ''
Hitman Go ''Hitman Go'' is a turn-based puzzle video game developed by Square Enix Montréal and published by Square Enix's European subsidiary. Announced in February 2014, the game was released for iOS in April 2014 and for Android in June 2014. Windo ...
'' (2014) and ''
Lara Croft Go ''Lara Croft Go'' is a turn-based puzzle video game in the ''Tomb Raider'' series. The player moves Lara Croft as a puzzle piece through a board game while avoiding obstacles and manipulating the environment. The developers distilled major seri ...
'' (2015), in which
Square Enix Montréal Square Enix Montréal was a Canadian video game developer based in Montreal. It created the ''Go'' series of turn-based puzzle games for mobile devices based on former Eidos Interactive intellectual properties. Square Enix Montréal was found ...
distilled major motifs from the games' respective series to fit turn-based, touchscreen, puzzle gameplay. New to the ''Go'' series, ''Deus Ex Go'' introduced an in-game story and puzzle creation mode. ''Deus Ex Go'' was released in August 2016, for
Android Android may refer to: Science and technology * Android (robot), a humanoid robot or synthetic organism designed to imitate a human * Android (operating system), Google's mobile operating system ** Bugdroid, a Google mascot sometimes referred to ...
and iOS platforms to generally favorable reviews. The game was later ported to Microsoft platforms. Critics wrote that the game successfully captured the cybernetic dystopia of the ''Deus Ex'' series and the brain teasing puzzles of the ''Go'' mobile game series. But compared to the other entries in the ''Go'' series, reviewers considered ''Deus Ex Go'' to be less creative, with a lackluster story, less visually interesting aesthetic, and shorter length. Embracer Group, following their acquisition of Square Enix Montréal, announced that ''Deus Ex Go'' would be removed from app stores with its servers shut down on January 4, 2023.


Gameplay

The player touches the screen to move
Adam Jensen Adam Jensen is a fictional character in the '' Deus Ex'' series, the player character of Eidos-Montréal's '' Deus Ex: Human Revolution'' (2011) and '' Deus Ex: Mankind Divided'' (2016). Initially an ex-cop turned Chief of Security for Sarif ...
, a protagonist from the stealth combat, cyber-
dystopian A dystopia (from Ancient Greek δυσ- "bad, hard" and τόπος "place"; alternatively cacotopiaCacotopia (from κακός ''kakos'' "bad") was the term used by Jeremy Bentham in his 1818 Plan of Parliamentary Reform (Works, vol. 3, p. 493). ...
''Deus Ex'' series, between nodes on a hexagonal grid towards an exit. If moved to a specific node, the character will stealthily take down guards, hack computers, and activate his human augmentations, such as invisibility. Enemies who spot Jensen will move towards and, if they reach his node, eliminate him. Alternatively, Jensen can eliminate enemies if approached from behind or their side. In the game's story, which is set before the events of '' Deus Ex: Mankind Divided'', Jensen's sole mission is to save an important person, but is continually set back by puzzles—54 in total. The puzzles grow in complexity by adding complications to several simple mechanics. Mechanical enemies and obstacles, such as gun turrets and raisable platforms, are hackable via computer terminals on nearby nodes. The player drags their finger on the touchscreen to connect the terminal's node and the hackable device. The character can store a
power-up In video games, a power-up is an object that adds temporary benefits or extra abilities to the player character as a game mechanic. This is in contrast to an item, which may or may not have a permanent benefit that can be used at any time chosen ...
to move for two turns without detection while in an enemy's line of sight, activate terminals remotely, or use projectile attacks against guards on distant nodes. The main game runs about three hours in length, and the player can purchase puzzle solutions through microtransactions. An additional puzzle design node—also new to the ''Go'' series—lets players make single-screen puzzles to share with others. Square Enix highlights five new puzzles in a weekly rotation. As part of a tie-in with ''Deus Ex: Mankind Divided'', players complete the main story and weekly puzzles in the mobile game to unlock perks in the console title.


Development

''Deus Ex Go'' follows the premise behind Square Enix Montreal's previous ''Go'' mobile series titles—''
Lara Croft Go ''Lara Croft Go'' is a turn-based puzzle video game in the ''Tomb Raider'' series. The player moves Lara Croft as a puzzle piece through a board game while avoiding obstacles and manipulating the environment. The developers distilled major seri ...
'' (2015) and ''
Hitman Go ''Hitman Go'' is a turn-based puzzle video game developed by Square Enix Montréal and published by Square Enix's European subsidiary. Announced in February 2014, the game was released for iOS in April 2014 and for Android in June 2014. Windo ...
'' (2014)—in distilling the essence of the series' core gameplay for turn- and touchscreen-based puzzles. The ''Deus Ex Go'' development team was split between employees who had worked on '' Hitman: Sniper'' and those who had worked on the ''Go'' series. Their combination was expected to resolve philosophical differences between the teams stemming from indie and AAA traditions of game development and pricing. Throughout development, the team asked themselves whether the ''Go'' elements felt as if they belonged to the ''Deus Ex'' series. The team sampled several kinds of hacking mechanics before deciding to use terminals that modified each puzzle rather than performing single-use instrumental kills. They also decided to add a narrative—the first in the ''Go'' series—drawing from its importance in the main series. Several elements from the series did not translate well to mobile, such as player choice, which had too many possibilities to suit the game's puzzle-solving. The team also invested in tools that made puzzle construction easier. Prior games took three months to make 25 puzzles, while ''Deus Ex Go'' tool nearly tripled their output. As a result, the team planned post-release puzzles and a tool for players to create their own. This new puzzle design mode released, as planned, two months after the game's launch. Designer Étienne Giroux compared their choice to release a new daily puzzle with progressive difficulty peaking on Fridays to the regularity of ''The New York Times'' crossword puzzles. Square Enix said that the game's puzzles were more difficult than those of previous games, and unlike the prior two ''Go'' games, ''Deus Ex Go'' uses a hexagonal grid instead of squares. Square Enix announced ''Deus Ex Go'' at a press event in advance of the June 2016
Electronic Entertainment Expo E3 (short for Electronic Entertainment Expo or Electronic Entertainment Experience in 2021) is a trade event for the video game industry. The Entertainment Software Association (ESA) organizes and presents E3, which many developers, publisher ...
. It was released on August 18, 2016, for
Android Android may refer to: Science and technology * Android (robot), a humanoid robot or synthetic organism designed to imitate a human * Android (operating system), Google's mobile operating system ** Bugdroid, a Google mascot sometimes referred to ...
and iOS platforms on both phones and tablets. The game was later ported to Windows and Windows 10 Mobile, and the team later released a documentary video on their development process. Embracer Group, following their acquisition of Square Enix Montréal, announced that ''Deus Ex Go'' would be removed from app stores with its servers shut down on January 4, 2023.


Reception

Prior to the game's release, Ryan McCaffrey (''
IGN ''IGN'' (formerly ''Imagine Games Network'') is an American video game and entertainment media website operated by IGN Entertainment Inc., a subsidiary of Ziff Davis, Inc. The company's headquarters is located in San Francisco's SoMa distri ...
'') wrote that the ''Go'' series composed the "smartest" mobile entries of a high-budget, major video game series. Critics who previewed the game found it to be on par with the other ''Go'' titles. Colin Campbell ('' Polygon'') said that previews of the game matched the series' aesthetic. The game received "generally favorable" reviews, according to video game review aggregator Metacritic. Reviewers wrote that the game successfully captured the cybernetic dystopia of the ''Deus Ex'' series and the brain-teasing puzzles of the ''Go'' mobile game series. Compared to the other entries in the ''Go'' series, reviewers considered ''Deus Ex Go'' added story to be lackluster, its aesthetic to be less visually interesting, and its length to be shorter. While some reviewers tired of the ''Go'' series, others thought ''Deus Ex Go'' continued the high standards of its forebears. Among the most satisfying moments in the ''Go'' series, the ''IGN'' and '' TouchArcade'' reviewers appreciated the game mechanic of determining how best to use a hack or drone to slip past enemies. The ''IGN'' reviewer found the game's puzzles somewhat harder than those of its predecessors, but was able to easily resolve them upon after taking brief breaks. The game's minimalism also led to some complications. Some of the solutions, he complained, were dependent on unintuitive player experimentation, such as realizing that the invisibility device also served as a projectile. Some of these visual cues were lost amidst the game's visual presentation. ''TouchArcade'' wondered whether the simplified environment was an aesthetic choice or the result of efforts to save on development costs. The '' GameSpot'' reviewer was disappointed to see an option for paid puzzle solutions in an otherwise short game about discovering the secret to a puzzle on one's own. Compared to the main series, in which the player may stake out a building at a distance, the experimentation in ''Deus Ex Go'' is limited to finding the right answer rather than finding multiple routes to solve the same problem. ''IGN'' wrote that the game's story and environments remained in the background and were ultimately forgettable, or in the case of the former, a hindrance, especially when the scenes could not be skipped on later replays. By the same token, predecessors such as ''Lara Croft Go'' hid treasures in its background such that players would revisit its levels, but ''Deus Ex Go'' had little to interest players besides its primary mission. The game's sole challenge of completing the puzzle in the fewest moves, ''GameSpot'' explained, quickly became uninteresting. ''Gamezebo'' reviewer instead faulted the series and wrote that after three games, its formula felt repetitive. ''TouchArcade'' concluded that, unlike the other ''Go'' games, ''Deus Ex Go'' was less creative overall and did not subvert the themes of its parent series quite like the others.


References


External links

* {{good article 2016 video games Android (operating system) games Deus Ex IOS games Dystopian video games Puzzle video games Video games developed in Canada Single-player video games Square Enix games Windows games Windows Mobile games