So we all pretty much know at this point that when a solitary dame walks into your office one night bathed in shadow and looking for your help, your best course of action is to immediately blow her away with the shotgun you keep under your desk, right? Right? Well Third Eye Crime’s hero, Rothko, didn’t get the message, and now you get to help him out of a pretty big jam.
The game’s plot is told by scrolling through some very nicely put together comic book panels.
Third Eye Crime is a stealth/puzzle game for iOS and the first title released from Moonshot Games who you may already know as a collection of former Bungie employees or the team behind the unfortunately ill-fated Fallen Frontier. The game has you controlling a professional art thief as he finds himself navigating through a bad situation that just keeps heading south, getting him into trouble with everyone from gangsters to corrupt politicians.
And how does Rothko navigate these sticky situations? Why with stealth of course. While our hero may be in a shady line of work he’s not one for punches and kicks, instead choosing to avoid enemies entirely or trick them using his numerous gadgets and telepathic powers.
The game’s controls are simple enough, tap on a location on the map and you’ll head for it. Alternatively (and preferably) you can also draw a path for your character to follow. Once an enemy spots you you’ll either want to break line of sight and force them to start searching the map for you, or in a lot of cases you’re just going to want to bolt for the exit and hope they don’t catch up to or shoot you.
But getting to the end of a level isn’t necessarily your only goal. Each level has a set of three extra challenges for you to attempt. These challenges can be anything from avoiding being seen by any enemies to simply collecting all the extra treasure scattered around the area. The challenges are great for replayability but completing them doesn’t have any effect on your progress in the game’s story. In fact, aside from some Game Center achievements there doesn’t seem to be any tangible reward to finishing levels with a perfect score (although admittedly I didn’t get a perfect score on each level, so hey maybe there’s a secret in there somewhere).
Blue represents your enemy’s field of vision. Red signifies where they think you’re hiding.
Rothko has a number of different abilities available to him, although they’re not all available at once. Each Chapter introduces a new gadget or power for Rothko to use. These abilities range from the very simple like an audible buzzer to distract enemies to more complex abilities like a full on decoy version of Rothko that you can use to lure enemies away from your actual location or a deploy-able piece of cover that you can use to trap enemies in corridors etc..
Some of your abilities just kind of show up without much fanfare or introduction. There’s nothing super complex but I almost always had a failed run the first time I encountered something new.
Despite occasionally being forced to learn by trial and error I had a lot of fun navigating the game’s 120 levels. There’s a very nice blend of stealth action and puzzles happening in the title. There were plenty of levels where I was able to draw a single perfect path to dodge every opponent and move on but at the same time there just as many levels where I found myself hiding around corners waiting for my pursuers to move on before making a break for the exit.
The game continues to throw different twists into the mix right up until its end. In a few stages you’ll find yourself controlling two characters and working in tandem to reach your goal. Another set of levels forces you to beeline for the exit at a particularly brisk rate of speed while you tail somebody.
On top of the built in abilities the game also does allow for some extra power ups via its store front. These abilities generally feel a bit overpowered and I never actually had to use them during my playthrough. The game is already generous enough with letting you skip stages that you’ll probably never find yourself stuck in that classic F2P-esque loop where you’re unable to move forward in the game without shelling out some cash.
Although the game side-steps the usual negative things associated with in-app purchases its pricing scheme might merit some explanation. The first act can be purchased for $2.99, the following two acts are priced at $.99 each. You’re going to want those last two acts if you plan to see the game’s story through to the end so for all intents and purposes you should consider the game to be $4.99.
If you elect to use the bonus powers I mentioned above those are priced out at about $.99 cents for a pack of 10-15 uses. You can also just purchase the “Infinity Pack” which will give you unlimited access to everything for $9.99, so worst case scenario, the most you could really spend on the game is about $15, and again, to reiterate, I did just fine completing the game without any of the bonus powers.
One second away from a perfect score. Challenges in the game are usually tough but fair.
The game’s art style and soundtrack coalesce into a beautiful noir blend. I’m a huge sucker when it comes to old time detective stories and although that’s not our buddy Rothko’s official title the whole package feels delightfully like it was ripped from the pages of a Dashiell Hammett story (minus the telepathy of course). The game’s soundtrack fits it perfectly, this is definitely a title where you’ll want to leave the volume up.
I think some people might take issue with the title’s pricing structure but if you go in planning to spend $4.99 there’s really not much to get upset about. Third Eye Crime is sometimes stressful, sometimes frustrating, and always feels fair, which really means it’s a pretty damn good puzzle game, and definitely one worth checking out.
This game was reviewed using review code provided to us by the publisher.
