Device 6

Device 6 is a game you read more than play – the text on the screen winds around photographs, maps, and illustrations, turning, breaking, and changing direction depending on where the character Anna walks through a mysterious island full of mysteries. You swipe your finger across the text, which literally follows the walking route, and the puzzles are hidden directly in the words – in recurring patterns, hints, and wordplay that need to be deciphered, not just read as an ordinary paragraph. It's an unusual blend of text adventure and visual puzzle, where the form of the storytelling is just as important as its content, and the game never allows itself to simplify this principle into ordinary reading.

The Swedish studio Simogo released Device 6 in 2013, and the game quickly earned a reputation as one of the most imaginatively designed titles on mobile ever – the experimental typography worked only because a touch device lets you smoothly rotate and scroll the screen in step with the text, something that can't be replicated as naturally and fluidly on paper or on a computer. A spy plot with a Cold War flavor and a hazy line between dream and reality gives the game a literary, mildly unsettling atmosphere that keeps the player in suspense right up to the ambiguous ending.

The short playtime here is intentional – Device 6 is conceived as one continuous read, more a novella than a game meant for dozens of hours, and precisely because of that it stays in memory as a whole, indivisible experience.

Why play it: For players drawn to an unusual blend of literature and puzzle who don't mind a short but dense and one-of-a-kind experience.