Circulous is the mind-twisting puzzle game from one of Apple’s favorite teen devs [Updated]

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Circulous
Puzzle game is available for pre-order today.
Photo: Chain Reaction Games

Update: Circulous launched in the App Store today, priced $4.99.

Like point-and-click adventures? Enjoy escape room puzzles? Then you’ll love Circulous — or so its 16-year-old creator Brayden Gogis hopes.

If your response to a teen creating an iOS game is “how good could it really be?” the answer is pretty darn great. Gogis has been developing games for iOS for several years, and his previous titles won kudos from Cupertino itself. Apple even referred to him as the “high school puzzle master.” Circulous is the title he’s most proud of. Check out a trailer below.

Circulous is kind of a successor to my previous game, The Company,” Gogis told Cult of Mac. “If someone had played The Company Game and enjoyed my unique style of puzzles, blended with an interesting story and some humor, this dials everything up to 11. The environment-based puzzles take inspiration from games like The Room or Rusty Lake — but the phone puzzles are more similar to The Guides or Blackbox-style puzzles.”

An interesting game dynamic

In Circulous, you play a character who must solve “one of the world’s most diabolical” scientific scandals. It’s an episodic mystery narrative puzzler, combining corporate espionage, conspiracy theories, and moral dilemmas, alongside more conventional puzzles.

“You can switch back and forth between the character’s environment, and the device of the character — phone on iOS, laptop on iPadOS,” Gogis explained. “This is especially unique on the iPhone as you rotate your phone to switch to the phone of the character. It, at its heart, is an escape room-style puzzle game. You have to use physical and digital clues to solve puzzles and move along in the story.”

You play as the improbably named Amanda Trouser, who has just been hired as a cyber-security specialist at a high-profile biotechnology company. It’s your job to investigate a string of data breaches and hacks. Inevitably, things aren’t quite what they seem.

Gogis said that he started working on Circulous at the beginning of this year. “I plan to have monthly content updates to keep people playing and keep the story unfolding one chapter at a time,” he said.

It won’t land in the App Store until August 13. However, pre-order it today for $3.99. Then you can forget about it for the next couple of months until it goes live. After that, get ready to dive in and start puzzle-solving. All while supporting an up-and-coming game developer in the process.

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