Hello everyone.

I just finished a playthrough of this free mobile game I found and I wanted to share my thoughts on it with you. The game in question is called "Alter Ego," created by the company Caramel Column Inc., who actually recently made a spin off of this game called "Alter Ego Complex."

Alter Ego is a clicker game, similar to say, the infamous Cookie Clicker, but it takes that base and expands it greatly. The game opens with a character that appears as a face on a wall, or perhaps a door of sorts? The face is split right down the middle, so it's hard to tell. The refer to you as their "lost child" and introduce themselves as "Ego Rex." In the game, you walk along a black hallway and tap on whispers to gather the game's currency, Ego. Once you collect enough Ego, you can speak to a girl named Es to advance the story. Yes, you heard right- this is a clicker game with a story, and that story leans heavily on psychology and philosophy- especially that of Sigmund Freud's concepts of the Id, Ego and Superego.

The philosophical themes can be seen with the game's auto-clicker mechanic. Where in most games they're something like a farm, in this game they're books. Not just any books, but specifically a hand selected series of books that contain strong philosophical themes to them. You start with the book No Longer Human by Osamu Daizu but can collect more books later on, such as Franz Kafka's The Metamorphosis, Marie Shelly's Frankenstein and even a book that acts as a collection of Edgar Allen Poe's works. You can "upgrade" a book by spending Ego to turn the pages of the novel. Once you reach a certain point in the book, you will be greeted with a quote from it, which will then start appearing as whispers. The whispers, which you tap on, appear as simple speech bubbles with quotes on them. At first only the question "What am I?" will appear. However, reading and taking Es' quizzes will add more quotes.

Speaking of Es' quizzes, I should explain that. When talking to Es, she will often give you a quiz or a puzzle in order to determine aspects of your personality. It is important to note that this is done as a gameplay mechanic and is far from an actual psychological evaluation. You can retake these quizzes, however at three points in the game you will be notified that you can not change your answers any longer. This is because your interactions with Es will lead you down paths that then lead to one of the game's three endings. I will not spoil the story of this game as I recommend you play it. I will say though that I hope you come to a better ending than I did when you play this game.

The game is available on the app store. It's free, and while it does have ads, they are in no way intrusive. If they really cause that much of a problem for you, you can pay $2.99 to get rid of them. Yes, this game does have elements that you can pay for, but unlike a lot of other mobile games it is not a problem and you don't need to pay for them to progress through the game. There are four downloadable content packs that add in extra scenarios, but I personally have not played through those. I'm sure some of you may be wondering what my experience with the game's story is like, but I think I'll save that for another day.

If anything I said sounds interesting to you, feel free to play the game and let me know what you think of it in the comments down below. (Try to keep them spoiler free though.) With all that said, thank you for reading my post. I'll see you all later.

-Robin.