Well would you look at that – a Go game that has nothing to do with Pokemon and will almost certainly lead zero people to walk into landmines or tumble off cliffs. Rejoice humanity!
Although it has Deus Ex backgrounds and animations, this is essentially a puzzle game where you are figuring how to move across the board in the least number of moves.
Along the way you can nab yourself 24 different achievements and the sense of accomplishment for beating some truly brain-twisting levels. Here’s the real kicker though: if you manage to perfectly complete each level, you actually unlock content in the impending full game Deus Ex: Mankind Divided.
Completing the story mode from beginning to end, clearing every single level with the minimum required moves, and completing weekly puzzles all offer up Praxis Kits you can use in the upcoming PC/console game if you link your Square Enix account to Deus Ex Go.
Free console swag for playing a mobile game? Yes please!
For specific help on completing each level, check out our guides to:
How Deus Ex Go’s Mechanics Work
The game really throws you right in with no tutorial of any kind, just expecting you to figure out how to play by losing repeatedly. Forget that nonsense, we’re going to show you how to live the whole way through from beginning to end!
Deus Ex: Go is turn based, so although its about stealthing your way through a gigantic corporate megaplex, you have plenty of time to consider your next move – always use it and think before acting!
The basic idea is to reach the end of a level, whether that be an elevator to the next floor or a desk filled with corporate secrets. Tapping a circle moves you one line over and utilizes a turn. Littered across the circles will be guards on the lookout for assassin thieves just like you, and they also move one circle per turn.
Each circle uses a turn, and breaking line of sight initiates a chase
As soon as you enter a guard’s line of sight (at any distance), he activates a Titan shield and becomes invincible, then starts charging and will move one circle towards you each turn. If you leave line of sight or run away far enough, the guard will turn around and head back to his starting position.
The entire basis of the game is predicting the guard movement so you can get around them (or kill them) and reach the end point. You have to either outrun a guard to the end point using the level layout to your advantage, or instead position yourself in such a way that you can get on the side or behind a guard and launch an attack.
Moving into a guard’s circle when they haven’t seen you initiates a stealth kill, but in most cases you don’t have to kill guards to reach the end, and can instead just move around them if you’re thinking ahead.
Mastering Turn Based Movement
The most important thing to keep in mind when planning your movement is that guards only notice if you cross directly in front of their line of sight – they don’t see you if you come up from the side.
To reach the end of a level you have to think about where the guard will be after you move, so keep in mind it doesn’t use up a turn to pivot and turn around. In other words, if a guard hits a wall, he will immediately go back to the previous circle he was on in the next turn, so don’t get in his way. They will also immediately see (and kill) you if you are following behind a guard when he hits a wall and turns around.
Luring guards into specific locations is how you create a path to the end
When you find yourself in a difficult position and it seems like there’s nowhere to go, sometimes the best move is to go back where you just were to force the guard to move.
When there are too many guards to get through an area, you have to use them against each other to create a path.
If a guard is running one direction, he remains still when another guard is in his path, no matter how many turns you use to move. This gives you openings to get through until the blocking guard sees you and moves.
The second guard will stay in that position until the first guard moves
A guard will also only chase the direction he’s facing, so use sideways movement to your advantage. For instance if a guard hits a wall and turns around, you can move next to him and he won’t see you unless he is directly facing your current circle.
Special Abilities And Terrain Features
In some cases there’s just no path through the lines to the end, which is why you have to utilize special abilities and features like turrets.
The blue triangle offers an Augmentation power that turns you invisible for a short time, letting you slip past guards (or sneak up and kill them). Activate invisibility by tapping the blue triangle in the upper-right corner and then tap the circle you are standing on.
It’s important to remember that invisibility offered by the blue triangle only lasts for one move, so you have to strategically plan how to use it, as your second move will trigger line of sight for guards.
You can take out a guard from the front while invisible if he is stationary, but if he has his shield activated and is moving into the same square as you, the guard takes precedence and you’ll have to start the level over.
Invisibility lets you move in front of a guard’s line of sight without dying
Even better than invisibility, turrets kill guards even if they have their Titan shields activated, but they will only fire if you enter the turret’s line of sight.
Unlike other guards, turrets see you and fire even if guards are in the way. This can be used to your advantage, such as luring a guard to run along one lane of circles while you shadow beneath on a lower lane, triggering a turret to kill the guard for you.
By moving forward, the turret will kill the guard running to the right
Besides turrets, there are also computer terminals to hack that are marked by yellow triangles. To hack the terminal, just enter the circle and tap your space. Drag your finger along the path you want to use to hack an object, and then tap the yellow triangle with a white X mark to exit the hacking screen.
Be sure to consider your hacking path carefully, because a guard passing through a hacked circle will disrupt the hack and you’ll have to go back and do it again. Before hacking any object, pay attention to where the guards will be running when you cross their line of sight in a few turns. When a turret is hacked it turns yellow and will no longer fire at you, but it will still fire at a guard chasing after you.
Hacking turrets to kill a guard
Calculating turn order is incredibly important, so remember that hacking a terminal or activating invisibility doesn’t cost a turn (although moving into the terminal’s circle does use a turn).
To succeed in any given level, always think in terms of the next turn and where the guards will be, instead of where they are. Sometimes you have to go on some truly wild goose chases, luring guard after guard after guard on seemingly pointless chases until there’s that one open spot letting you reach the end.
Don’t worry if you mess up though, as there’s no downside to losing (other than having to restart the level), so experiment until you figure out the proper path to take and hit the minimum moves required.
With these Deus Ex Go tips in mind you have tall he tools necessary to figure out each puzzle level on your own, but some are more frustratingly difficult than others, so next we’ll be covering how to get through some of the more vexing levels.
