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At Haiku Games, we receive hundreds of resumes for each position that we post. Since we see so many candidates, we’ve been able to identify common mistakes in their applications. Mistake 1: You talk more about how you love playing games rather than making them One of the reasons I love the game industry is that it's filled with people that love games. That passion for the product was something I never experienced in my previous jobs. That said, in the same way that watching a lot of movies doesn't make you qualified to be a director, playing a lot of games doesn’t mean you are good at making them. I always enjoy hearing about what games people love - but spend more time emphasizing the games you have made and projects you have completed.  Mistake 2: You don’t know the company
I understand applying for jobs is time consuming so you might not be able to do a deep dive on every single company that you apply for. However, you should be able to quickly figure out some basic facts about the company and what games they make by looking at their website. For example, Haiku Games is an indie company. Do you want to work at any indie company? Say something about that. We also make Adventure Escape games. Do you like this type of game? Say something about that. If you don’t like indie companies or our games… well you probably don’t want the job. Mistake 3: Your accomplishments are hard to understand You can stand out from many other applicants if you can frame your accomplishments in a measurable way. For example, tell us how many people played the game you were involved in or the number of people you managed. If you work at a small game company, we might not know what it is. Is it an indie company with a huge kickstarter campaign, a venture backed game studio, or four friends in a garage? This will help us understand your work experience. It is particularly difficult to distinguish between students graduating from game design programs. Almost everyone has worked on a number of student game projects. How can we tell the difference between these projects? Was your project successful? Did you ship it commercially later? Were you at the top of the class? Anything you can tell us that helps us understand your accomplishments will make you stand out. Mistake 4: You don’t connect the dots from your experience to the job Especially when we are hiring for junior game designer positions, we have many candidates who do not have professional game design experience. If this is you, please make it easy to understand how you are qualified. A surprising number of people apply for a job from a completely unrelated field (for example, construction management) and say nothing about why that would be a good fit for the game industry. For example, one of our game designers, was previously a Development Coordinator at a children’s museum. It isn’t obvious how that is connected to game design. However, she explained she loves escape rooms and puzzles, designed an escape room for her friends, and was a consultant for an escape room company. Conclusion One of the reasons I love being a founder of a company is because we can take a chance on different people. This lines up with our worldview that greatness can come from anywhere. I hope this article helps you in your job search. If you’re interested in working at Haiku Games, our jobs are posted here.
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 Congratulations to the Top 500 finishers of the Adventure Escape Global Race. Read more about how the race went and future plans here!
 What is the AEM Global Race? The Global Race is our first ever live event for Haiku Games since we first started making games 7 years ago! We thought adding the excitement of a timed competition to the satisfaction of solving our puzzle mysteries would be a fun event for our players. Congratulations! Congratulations to those players who completed the race already! As of this writing, we have over 300 people that have successfully completed Psychic Squad. We are extremely impressed by everyone - many of you completed chapters quicker than members of the Haiku Games team when we were playtesting the chapter! Prizes will be awarded for all finishers, so don't give up. Race Communications A small but significant number of players did not realize they had to purchase a ticket to play in the race. We sincerely apologize to those who thought they could play the race but weren’t able to without a ticket. We will review all communications sent to players to see how we can do better in the future. Our new game Psychic Squad will be available for everyone for free as usual shortly after the race is over and we finalize the game (for example, we have to add the hints and puzzle skips in). We expect it will come out in 1-2 weeks.  What’s next? We’re certainly excited about the response to the race. Many players let us know they had a great time and wanted to play another one. We also heard that some players connected with other players around the world, and it makes us feel great that we can bring people together by creating games. It’s too early to tell, but we hope to hold a race for another game in the future! In the meantime, we are working on bringing one of the Haiku Classic games, Starstruck featuring Detective Kate Gray, to Adventure Escape Mysteries. We are also working on an unannounced new title featuring never before seen characters that we can’t wait to show everyone. Here’s a sneak peak!  Trapmaker 3 Launch! We are happy to be launching Trapmaker 3: The Final Trap! Play the thrilling conclusion to the Trapmaker trilogy. Trapmaker took Kate’s friends hostage and hid them in an abandoned amusement park filled with his deadly traps. Will Kate be able to rescue her friends and escape alive? Play Trapmaker 3 on Steam! The Covenant Premium Release! We also have a surprise release of The Covenant. Sam goes on a camping trip with her high school friends. An ancient evil awakens, forcing you to choose who will be sacrificed to The Hunger each night! Will anyone escape?
We’ve listened to feedback from many Steam users who say they prefer a paid download instead of the free to play model. If you purchase The Covenant all chapters will be unlocked, and all skips and hints will will be included in the game for 0 stars. The Covenant has many choices you make which impact the story, so it’s highly replayable. Let us know what you think! Play The Covenant on Steam! The Puzzle Pack is now available in Adventure Escape Mysteries! Update your iOS or Android app to Version 10.00+ to play (other platforms coming soon). The Puzzle Pack is a new feature where you can play a collection of some of our most popular puzzles from our past games. We’ve redesigned the puzzles so they are exciting new challenges but still familiar to those who have played the game. We’re eager to have you solve them! We also thought it would be fun to bring together different stars of our Haiku games. You play as Sam who mysteriously finds herself in the presence of Detective Kate, Professor Burns, Captain Conroy, and Princess Nimue, who are urgently training her to be an expert puzzle solver. Why is this important? Is this even real? Play the Puzzle Pack to find out!  The Puzzle Pack is a new idea, and every time we launch a new idea, some players are disappointed since they think it means we are not working on Adventure Escape anymore. (You might recall a similar thing happened when we launched Solve It). We want to assure you that we have as many if not more people working on Adventure Escape than ever before. Here's a sneak peek from a new mystery we are launching soon!  Please let us know what you think and if you’d like more Puzzle Packs in the future!
Updated June 20, 2022
We recommend playing Adventure Escape Mysteries if you haven’t played Adventure Escape games before. It has multiple mysteries you can play, the fewest bugs, and has user accounts so you can play on multiple devices. It's not necessary to play our earlier games to understand what is happening in Adventure Escape Mysteries, so check it out if you want the best adventure escape game experience. But many players have emailed us asking about the Adventure Escape games in order of release, so we thought we’d write that up here. If you’re a completionist that wants to play our games chronologically, this list is for you! All Adventure Escape Games
We have two games that are older. They are not well updated, and though we look back fondly at them, we think our newer games are better.
Detective Kate Games in Order These are just the games featuring Detective Kate.
Download The Covenant now: Seven teenagers go camping in Grant Forest. Will they survive? Everything is going well until the Blood Moon rises... WARNING: This is a horror game and contains mature themes and is intended for mature audiences only. Update Adventure Escape Mysteries to version 9.00+ play: http://onelink.to/mystery  Play Adventure Escape Mysteries on your computer!
Adventure Escape Mysteries is live on Steam! Pirate's Treasure and Trapmaker 1 are available. Even if you already have played these two games, please consider recommending our game to help us out. Download it here  Download Solve It 3 now! Solve It 3: Killer Fans is a thrilling murder mystery/visual novel where your choices change the story. While this is still primarily a text-based game, we took feedback from our Adventure Escape fans to heart and added more puzzles to solve. How you choose to investigate impacts the characters more than ever! Click here to download Wondering why we made this? Check out our blog article.  Play Adventure Escape on your computer (soon)! We are releasing Pirate's Treasure and Trapmaker 1 on Steam so you can play on your computer. Your progress will be linked with your progress on your mobile device. Even if you have already played these two mysteries, please consider wishlisting the game as it will help Haiku Games spread the word so we can reach new players! Click here to Wishlist on Steam  When is our next game coming?
Many people have asked us when a new Adventure Escape is coming out. We are absolutely working on a new game that will be launched in the Adventure Escape Mysteries app. Everyone at Haiku is also quarantined at home, so we understand the desire to find some good entertainment. But we are a small team, these games take time to make, and we want to make sure everything we release is high quality. We believe the new game will be available in around a month. Please stay safe and sorry we don't have something ready right now! Can you explain how to solve a puzzle?
Unfortunately not. We receive quite a few emails and we're too small of a company to respond to each player. We also hope you will support us by using the in-game hint system. When's your next game coming out? We do not announce in advance when new games will be released because it is hard to predict. We are constantly making more Adventure Escape games, and we've learned that it takes time to get the puzzles right. In addition, fixing bugs always can take more time than expected. We are working as fast as we can! How do I hear when a new game is coming out? You can find out by joining our Facebook page or email list. We typically wait a week or two after a new game is released before announcing new game launches on Facebook or through our email list. The reason we wait is because we want to make sure there are no bugs that were not caught by our QA team. Why are we adding old games to Adventure Escape Mysteries? We are adding older games to Adventure Escape Mysteries for a few reasons: 1) We think new players can more easily find our old games this way, 2) We can add new features to the old apps (for example, we are going to add saving to Murder Inn which was not there before, and 3) it's easier for us to update one app rather than all our old ones. What is the deal with Solve It? Solve It is a new series that we are experimenting with. Read more about Solve It in our blog post. After releasing Solve It 3, we are stepping back from the Solve It series. As of right now, we have no plans to continue the series. What's the best way to contact us? The best way is to email us at support@haikugamesco.com. We also respond to messages on our Facebook page for Adventure Escape and Haiku Games, but it is a bit more sporadic. We receive quite a few emails, and we try to respond as quickly as possible. What's the best way to report bugs? If you see a bug in our game, please email us at support@haikugames.com and describe the problem - we'll do our best to fix it! It's also helpful if you provide this info:
I'm having trouble downloading the game. Help! Typically not being able to download is a problem with the app store you are using. Google Play: https://support.google.com/googleplay/troubleshooter/6241347?hl=en iOS: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT207165 Let us know if you have more questions about our games! Solve It is an experimental game by Haiku Games. It is a visual novel where you find clues, confront suspects, and solve a murder mystery. Is this another Adventure Escape game? No - this is an entirely new type of game. If you like Haiku Games, we hope you will give it a shot, but frankly we do not expect every Adventure Escape fan to like Solve It. It’s a different type of game with no inventory items and fewer puzzles, but more emphasis on story, dialogue, and interpersonal relationships. Will you keep making Adventure Escape games? Yes! We certainly will. Some players will be worried that making Solve It means we will move away from Adventure Escape. That’s not true at all - we have more people working on Adventure Escape than ever before. If Solve It does well, we may continue to make more similar games. And we hope both types of games will combine to bring more players to our company, which will help us continue to make games in the future. Why did you make Solve It? We think it’s fun! We played visual novel games like Choices and Episode. While we liked the stories of those games, we didn’t like how there weren’t too many decisions the player has to make since the stories are all very linear. We thought it would be fun to deduce who to confront with evidence to unravel the mystery. Experimenting with new games is important for us as a game company. It’s part of the challenge and fun of working at a game company, and we don’t want to get stagnant. So regardless of how well Solve It does, you can expect us to keep experimenting with new games in the future!  Our upcoming visual novel game, Solve It! Why is it only in English?
Solve It is an experimental game. We’re not sure whether players will like it, and we want to test out whether or not players like it. As a result, it is only available in a few countries right now, and it is only in English. Conclusion Thanks for reading! We hope we’ve answered some questions about Solve It and what we hope to accomplish with it. Download Solve It on iOS or Google Play. Please let us know your feedback! |
AuthorHaiku Games is the developer behind the Adventure Escape series. Play on iOS, Google Play, or Kindle! Archives
May 2022
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