TouchTone

Last updated

TouchTone
TouchTone icon.png
App icon
Developer(s) Mikengreg
Publisher(s) Mikengreg
Designer(s) Mike Boxleiter
Artist(s) Greg Wohlwend
Writer(s) Mike Boxleiter
Platform(s) iOS
Release
  • WW: March 19, 2015 (2015-03-19)
Genre(s) Puzzle
Mode(s) Single-player [1]

TouchTone is a 2015 puzzle video game developed and published by Mikengreg, a two-person indie game development team made up of Mike Boxleiter and Greg Wohlwend. The player monitors phone calls as part of a government surveillance program to find public threats. They unlock chains of emails by completing a series of puzzles in which a beam is reflected around a room to a set destination. TouchTone's core concept grew from a two-day game jam immediately following their 2012 release of Gasketball but only found its hacker theme following the mid-2013 global surveillance disclosures of Edward Snowden. The tone of TouchTone's story grew from satirical to serious over the course of the game's development.

Contents

The game was released on March 19, 2015, for iOS devices. The review aggregator website Metacritic characterized TouchTone's reviews as generally favorable. Critics praised the game's visual style and story but criticized the way the game did not allow players to skip puzzles. Reviewers found the light-bending puzzle premise unoriginal but appreciated its thematic connection.

Gameplay

TouchTone animated screenshot 2.gif
TouchTone animated screenshot 3.gif
In TouchTone's puzzles (left), the player rearranges the items onscreen to redirect a beam of light to its destination. The player is at the center of a story about government surveillance told through hacked emails (right), which are unlocked by completing puzzles.

As part of a government surveillance program, the player monitors phone calls to find public threats. Apart from infrequent interaction with their handler, the player is left to solve puzzles in pursuit of one such lead. The puzzles are based on the "reflection puzzle" popularized by role-playing video games wherein the player moves mirrors to reflect a beam of light about a room. In TouchTone, the player swipes the screen to move pieces that redirect incoming beams, symbolic of phone signals, into specific locations. The waveform beams are displayed in different solid colors and must be matched with the destination "node" of the same color by passing through moveable pieces that reflect and split the beam. [2] The pieces do not move individually but as rows and columns in cardinal directions. [3]

The levels are displayed in an overworld with a branching, tree structure. The player must pursue multiple branches to further the story. Optional, side-story branches do not advance the main plot but have the hardest puzzles. [2] The story is told through chains of emails, which are unlocked by completing puzzles. The player assumes the role of an American Muslim National Security Agency agent who determines whether the hacked emails are pertinent to national security. The ethics of government surveillance are a core theme of the game. [4]

Development

Michael Boxleiter headshot cropped.jpg
Greg Wohlwend headshot full frame.jpg
Mike Boxleiter and Greg Wohlwend

Mikengreg, an indie game developer duo of Mike Boxleiter and Greg Wohlwend, released the 2010 Solipskier and 2012 Gasketball together before TouchTone in 2015. [2] After Gasketball's release, Boxleiter and Wohlwend planned a celebratory road trip to a game jam in Victoria, British Columbia. Gasketball turned out to be a "financial flop", and so Boxleiter wanted to use the jam to create "something new, ... something really small and perfect". [5] By the end of the two-day jam, the core mirror reflection mechanics of TouchTone were in place, though it would take two years of sporadic work to finalize the remainder of the game. [5] During this time, the two also worked separately, and Wohlwend released the well-received Threes with Asher Vollmer in 2014. [2] Wohlwend tried to fit audio signal elements into TouchTone's nascent theme of light, lasers, and prisms. [5] They felt this direction was unsuccessful, like a "boring Flash game", and that the game too closely mimicked "a hacking minigame from a bigger AAA game like BioShock or System Shock ". [5]

TouchTone found its theme following the Edward Snowden global surveillance disclosures in mid 2013, as Mikengreg felt they could provide satirical commentary through the "hacking" element of the game. [5] The story shed its jocular tone as it and its political content grew deeper and more serious. [5] Boxleiter wrote most of the script, which totaled over 20,000 words in length. It was his first effort at professional writing, and it took him five months. He and Wohlwend would conference after each chapter for coherency. Boxleiter wanted the story to explore the "questions ... floating around the national consciousness" rather than be "heavy-handed" and prescriptive. [5] Despite this work, Boxleiter felt that the story and the gameplay "don't necessarily interact with each other", with the story serving to drive those less interested in puzzles through the rest of the game. [3] They playtested the game in public at the theater in Logan Square, Chicago, though they acknowledged difficulty in playtesting the story's private experience. [5] Mikengreg decided against including an option to skip puzzles, which they felt would spoil the game and the player's capacity to adapt to increasing difficulty. They attribute this game design philosophy to Derek Yu of Spelunky . [3]

TouchTone was released as an iOS universal app for both iPhone and iPad on March 19, 2015. [6] It received a front page feature on the iOS App Store upon its release. [5]

Reception

TouchTone received "generally favorable" reviews, according to video game review score aggregator Metacritic. [7] It received Pocket Gamer's silver award. [1]

Reviewers praised the game's aesthetics and criticized its unoriginal puzzle concept. [2] [8] TouchArcade's Shaun Musgrave wrote that the game's "striking" visuals and "politically charged" message were not completely reconciled but were "individually strong". [2] He described its art style as similar to Wohlwend's previous work and its political statement as indicative of Mikengreg's strong opinions. Musgrave praised the game's writing but thought the actual puzzles were weaker. [2] 148Apps's Jordan Minor found the "clinical, minimally-colored cyberspace" and 1970s thriller film aesthetic "chillingly appropriate" for the theme's tension. [8] He also chided the puzzles for not being "a reward unto themselves" and the gameplay's "monotony" for being similar to that of Papers, Please without serving the same dehumanizing point. [8] Minor called TouchTone "essentially a series of the hacking minigames ... [from] BioShock , Deus Ex , or Watch Dogs ." [8] Pocket Gamer's Craig Grannell appreciate how the game "often forces a kind of upside-down thinking" and compared its message to that of Blackbar . [1] Gamezebo 's Jim Squires said that TouchTone is "perfectly designed for a certain set of mobile gamers" and compared its gameplay to the 1987 Deflektor . [9] Despite the game's similarity to "countless light-bending puzzle games", he found Mikengreg's implementation "fiendishly clever" in the way the player moves rows of tiles rather than one at a time. [9]

Reviewers did not like the inability to skip puzzles. [2] [1] [9] Musgrave wrote that moments of being "stuck on a mandatory stage" detracted from the player's investment and sense of immersion in the story. [2] Grannell of Pocket Gamer wrote that TouchTone's linearity was its "only downside", though he also wished for options to "undo" mid-game choices and to save puzzle progress upon leaving the game. [1] Multiple reviewers appreciated the game's story. [2] [9] [4] [3] Wired 's Kyle Vanhemert felt that the act of determining whether messages were pertinent to national security was a "powerful experience". [4] Squires of Gamezebo considered the story one of the game's strong points, and unusually so for a puzzle game. He wrote that there was sufficient "intrigue" to want to finish the story, and that the reward of more story encouraged him to get through the harder puzzles. [9]

Related Research Articles

<i>Spider: The Secret of Bryce Manor</i> 2009 video game

Spider: The Secret of Bryce Manor is a 2009 side-scrolling action-puzzle video game for iOS and Android, developed and published by Tiger Style. The player takes control of a spider who comes to reside in to the deserted Bryce Manor and must spin webs to trap various types of insects, whilst simultaneously ascertaining what happened to the former residents of the manor. The game received critical acclaim and won multiple awards. Originally released in August, a Director's Cut update replaced the original version on the App Store in December. The update added ten levels, twenty-four Game Center achievements, new music, more story elements and an insect. A year after the game's initial release, a HD version was released for the iPad. In 2013, the game was also released for Android. A sequel, Spider: Rite of the Shrouded Moon, was released in August 2015 for iOS, Android, Windows, Mac and Linux.

<i>Dreamscape</i> (video game) 2011 video game

Dreamscape is a 2011 first-person adventure video game, with puzzle elements, developed and published by American studio Speedbump Studios. It was released worldwide on June 9, 2011 for iOS devices exclusively. The game does not follow traditional video game conventions, as it involves minimal interaction from the player and does not require choices to be made, and there are only basic puzzles for the player to complete. It instead places focus on its story, which is told through the perspective of a man called Wilson, who is caught in the limbo between life and death. Moments before his death, Wilson is transported to his own Dreamscape and is allowed to relive all his memories for one last time. While there he finally discovers the truth as to why his fiancee, Amelia, disappeared on the day of their wedding.

<i>Threes</i> 2014 video game

Threes is a puzzle video game by Sirvo, an independent development team consisting of game designer Asher Vollmer, illustrator Greg Wohlwend, and composer Jimmy Hinson. The game was released on February 6, 2014, for iOS devices and later ported to Android, Xbox One, Windows Phone, and Windows. In Threes, the player slides numbered tiles on a grid to combine addends and multiples of three. The game ends when there are no moves left on the grid and the tiles are counted for a final score.

<i>Blitz Brigade</i> 2013 video game

Blitz Brigade was a multiplayer first-person shooter video game developed and published by Gameloft for iOS, Android, and Windows Phone. It shut down their servers in 1 December 2023.

<i>Gasketball</i> 2012 video game

Gasketball is a basketball-themed puzzle video game for the iPad by Mikengreg, an independent development team of Michael Boxleiter and Greg Wohlwend. Players flick basketballs through 2D physics puzzles into the hoop in single-player, local multiplayer, and asynchronous HORSE-style online multiplayer modes. The game is free-to-play with in-app purchases. Development began in mid 2011 following Mikengreg's successful Solipskier. They were able to live from the earnings for Gasketball's two year development at their previous salary, which afforded them the stability to try new avenues and reject prototypes, though they worked 100-hour weeks. Towards the end of their development, they ran out of money and lived on the couches of friends. It was released on August 9, 2012, and the game did not reach their desired conversion rate at the time of launch.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Greg Wohlwend</span> American video game developer

Greg Wohlwend is an American independent video game developer and artist whose games include Threes! and Ridiculous Fishing. He originally formed Intuition Games with Iowa State University classmate Mike Boxleiter in 2007 where they worked on Dinowaurs and other small Adobe Flash games. Trained as an artist, Wohlwend worked mainly on the visual assets. As Mikengreg, they released Solipskier, whose success let the two take a more experimental approach with Gasketball, which did not fare as well. At the same time, Wohlwend collaborated with Asher Vollmer to make Puzzlejuice, and with Adam Saltsman to make Hundreds based on Wohlwend's first game design. He later released Threes! with Vollmer in 2014 to critical acclaim. His later games TouchTone and TumbleSeed were also the products of collaborations. Wohlwend was named among Forbes' 2014 "30 under 30" in the games industry.

<i>Solipskier</i> 2010 video game

Solipskier is a sports video game for Adobe Flash, iOS, and Android developed and published by Mikengreg, the two-person team of Michael Boxleiter and Greg Wohlwend. In Solipskier, the player draws the snowy slope for an on-screen skier to pass through slalom gates and tunnels. The character accelerates with downhill sections and can launch into the air to perform tricks and earn a higher score. The idea came from a brainstorming session about parallax scrolling with speedy action in the foreground and the ability for the player to "paint" the terrain. It was Boxleiter and Wohlwend's first game to receive public appreciation. It was released August 29, 2010 to generally favorable reviews and was a runner-up in the 2011 Game Developers Conference Independent Games Festival's Best Mobile Game category.

<i>Hundreds</i> (video game) 2013 video game

Hundreds is a puzzle video game where players touch circles to make them grow without overlapping. In the game's 100 levels, the player interacts with different types of circles to bring a counter to the number 100. The game was developed and published by Semi Secret Software in collaboration with Greg Wohlwend and was released for iOS on January 7, 2013, and on Android later that year.

<i>Puzzlejuice</i> 2012 video game

Puzzlejuice is a 2012 indie puzzle video game for iOS produced and developed by video game company Sirvo. The game is a combination of Tetris, tile-matching, and Boggle: players rearrange falling tetromino blocks into rows of similar colors, which turn into letters that are cleared from the board by forming words. The fast-paced game also includes challenges and power-ups. The development team consisted of three people; programmer Asher Vollmer initially developed the game alone, before reaching out to artist Greg Wohlwend for advice on the aesthetics. Composer Jimmy Hinson produced the game's music.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Asher Vollmer</span> American indie video game developer (born 1989)

Asher Vollmer is an American indie video game developer. He created Puzzlejuice and Threes. Vollmer also worked on Guildlings and Beast Breaker.

<i>Sonic Jump Fever</i> 2014 vertical platform game

Sonic Jump Fever was a 2014 vertical platform game developed by British studio Hardlight. It was the sequel to Sonic Jump. The game was made available for iOS and Android systems on 10 July 2014.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mikengreg</span> American independent video game company

Mikengreg is an independent video game development team of Mike Boxleiter and Greg Wohlwend. Their games include Solipskier, Gasketball, and TouchTone. The two met in a game development class at Iowa State University and later began to collaborate on the Adobe Flash game Dinowaurs. When the project was funded, they founded Intuition Games with other college friends in Ames, Iowa, where they worked on small Flash games such as Gray, Liferaft, and Fig. 8 for Flash game sites such as Kongregate. Dinowaurs was one of the first games signed for the Kongregate platform. Their other games involved controlling the weather, influencing individuals in a riot, and riding a bicycle. Boxleiter and Wohlwend worked on several additional games that were put on hiatus.

<i>Monty Pythons Cow Tossing</i> 2011 video game

Monty Python's Cow Tossing is a catapult-physics game. It was developed by South African studio Luma Arcade and released by Zed Worldwide on February 3, 2011 for Android, iOS, and J2ME. The game is similar in style to Angry Birds and Crush the Castle, and includes the premise of firing cows at Englishmen who are located in structures built of concrete, wood, and other materials. It is based on the film Monty Python and the Holy Grail "in which French militiamen hurl a heifer onto a band of English relic seekers", and to further tie-in to the movie, "funny quotes from the movie appear in bubbles over the characters".

<i>Mega Mall Story</i> 2014 video game

Mega Mall Story is a simulation game developed by Kairosoft Co. Ltd and released on August 9, 2011 for iOS. It released on the Nintendo Switch on January 17, 2019.

<i>Rules!</i> 2014 video game

Rules! is a 2014 educational puzzle video game co-developed by Marcel-André Casasola Merkle and Agnes Lison and published by TheCodingMonkeys. It was released for iOS in August 2014 and became the first game to be released on the Apple Watch in April 2015.

<i>Hitman: Sniper</i> 2015 video game

Hitman: Sniper is a 2015 mobile shooting gallery video game in the Hitman series by Square Enix Montréal. As the series' mainstay protagonist Agent 47, the player looks through a first-person sniper scope vision on their touchscreen device to assassinate several powerful figures who have assembled at a lakeside compound without alerting their associates. The player uses the environment to find creative ways to kill these targets, sometimes prompted by secondary objectives. Through mission progression, the player unlocks more powerful weapons and new weapon abilities.

<i>Deus Ex Go</i> 2016 video game

Deus Ex Go was a 2016 turn-based puzzle video game in the Deus Ex series by Square Enix. 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 (2014) and Lara Croft Go (2015), in which Square Enix Montréal 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 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's to be less creative, with a lackluster story, less visually interesting aesthetic, and shorter length.

<i>Incidence</i> (video game) 2017 video game

Incidence is a minimalist golfing style game by ScrollView Games. It was released on iOS on March 1, 2017.

<i>Survivalcraft</i> Sandbox video game

Survivalcraft is a 2011 open sandbox video game developed by Marcin Igor Kalicinski under the brand Candy Rufus Games. Following early test versions, it was released on 16 November 2011 for the Windows Phone, and is also available for Android, iOS, and Microsoft Windows. The game is set on a deserted island in an open world, where the player collects resources and items that can be made into survival tools. The game has six different game modes: Survival, Challenging, Cruel, Harmless, Adventure, and Creative. The first four involve the player gathering necessary resources to stay alive. The Creative mode gives the player unlimited items and health, and the Adventure mode is used for quest and parkour maps.

<i>Cat Bird</i> 2017 video game

Cat Bird is a 2017 mobile puzzle-platformer game developed and published by Ryan Carag, under the pseudonym Raiyumi, for Android and iOS. The game revolves around the titular character, a cross between a cat and a bird, who tries to get back to its home planet by travelling through portals at the end of each level. Cat Bird's main gimmick is that the player character can glide upon jumping, which can be used to overcome obstacles within the levels. Instead of giving the player a limited number of lives, the game instead just counts the number of deaths the player accumulated throughout the game.

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 6 Grannell, Craig (March 23, 2015). "TouchTone review". Pocket Gamer . Steel Media. Archived from the original on March 25, 2015. Retrieved May 2, 2015.
  2. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 Musgrave, Shaun (March 18, 2015). "'TouchTone' Review - Tricky Puzzles, Touchy Tone". TouchArcade. Archived from the original on May 12, 2015. Retrieved May 2, 2015.
  3. 1 2 3 4 Kuchera, Ben (March 20, 2015). "The $3 game that wants to create a totalitarian surveillance state with puzzles". Polygon . Vox Media. Archived from the original on May 10, 2015. Retrieved April 30, 2015.
  4. 1 2 3 Vanhemert, Kyle (March 19, 2015). "Become an NSA Spook in This iPhone Puzzle Game". Wired . Condé Nast. Archived from the original on May 11, 2015. Retrieved May 6, 2015.
  5. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 Dotson, Carter (March 24, 2015). "'TouchTone' Developers Mikengreg on How a 48-Hour Game Jam Game Took Two Years to Become a Politically-Charged Puzzler". TouchArcade. Archived from the original on April 29, 2015. Retrieved May 2, 2015.
  6. ↑ Willington, Peter (March 18, 2015). "TouchTone is a game about future technology, big brother, and the power of the individual in society". Pocket Gamer . Steel Media. Archived from the original on May 4, 2015. Retrieved May 2, 2015.
  7. 1 2 "TouchTone Critic Reviews for iPhone/iPad". Metacritic . CBS Interactive. Archived from the original on March 4, 2016. Retrieved April 30, 2015.
  8. 1 2 3 4 5 Minor, Jordan (March 19, 2015). "TouchTone Review". 148Apps. Steel Media. Archived from the original on May 11, 2015. Retrieved May 2, 2015.
  9. 1 2 3 4 5 6 Squires, Jim (March 20, 2015). "TouchTone Review: Puzzling Is Your Civic Duty". Gamezebo . Archived from the original on May 27, 2015. Retrieved May 2, 2015.

This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.