Given all the shady stuff they’ve gotten up to during the first two seasons of USA’s hacker hit Mr. Robot, you’d be forgiven for not wanting any software from the show’s monolithic E Corp on your phone. But it’s possible you might still hit download anyway on the fake company’s new messaging app, given that it’s actually a new game set in the Mr. Robot universe, distributed by Telltale, the masterminds behind such licensed gems as The Walking Dead and the recent Batman game.
Sadly, USA didn’t go so far as to release the game as the app—instead, it carries the clunky-but-apt title “Mr. Robot:1.51exfiltrati0n.apk”—which would have been a beautiful bit of meta awesomeness. But it’s still an interesting-looking experience, especially given that actual development of the game was handled by Night School Studio, the team that made Oxenfree, one of our best games of the year so far. Gameplay seems to mostly involve chatting with the show’s characters, flipping through messaging windows, and getting super paranoid, which seems pretty fitting with the tone of the show. And hey, at least the app—available for $3, with no in-game purchases—requires fewer permissions than Pokémon Go.