Your average person stores a ridiculous amount of personal information on their smartphone. Everything from photos to messages, call history, and sometimes even passwords and important accounts are just sitting on that phone, hiding behind a locked screen. But what would you do if you found the phone of a missing person, and started getting creepy messages on it? Would you investigate and look through their private things in order to try and find them? That’s the concept behind
Sara Is Missing.
An important note before I go into the review is that this game is labeled as a ‘prototype’ in that it’s technically not finished; it’s more of a preview for an actual game styled the same which will be coming out eventually. The developers said on Twitter that it would be Q1 2017, but since we’re already past that, it’s unclear when the full game will be released.
That being said, Sara Is Missing is a really fascinating game. In the storyline, you somehow acquire the damaged phone of Sara and have to rifle through her folders and files, message Sara’s contacts (multiple choice replies) and read her emails, and try and figure out where she went. The interface is fairly similar to a phone, although with the obnoxious digital assistant, IRIS, it’s not quite as smooth and streamlined as I would have liked. Regardless, the game is incredibly immersive and more than a little creepy.
Additionally, the depth of Sara Is Missing is pretty impressive; it’s obvious that there was a lot of thought put into the game as there are dozens of pictures, emails, texts, and even poems that users can rifle through. Although the game doesn’t really use most of the clues provided (remember, this is a prototype) there is some strange amount of immersion in looking through what appears to be a stranger’s phone.
The story itself involves cults, ghosts, and generally creepy things like the Deep Web. The game has two endings, depending on which routes you take and although it left me feeling a little disappointed that it ended so abruptly, I have to admit that it definitely took some very dark turns and users were asked to make some difficult choices.
Sara is Missing is not a very long game, and it is free to download. Users can play it on a computer,
Android, or
iPhone. There are no in-app ads, and no microtransactions; it’s 100% free and well worth the time.]]>
