In August of last year, Sunnyside Games released The Firm (Free), a twitchy high-scoring game based around stock trading. It featured simple swipe left or right controls for buying and selling stocks, making it a perfect one-handed game, and it also boasted some lovely pixel art and a main mechanic that was super easy to understand but very difficult to master, as cliché as that may be. The Firm was a pretty simple game, and Sunnyside has had plans to expand the experience pretty much since launch. It took a bit longer than expected, but this week the big version 1.1 patch for the game has arrived adding all sorts of new stuff.
First off is an entirely new user interface which is charmingly modeled after a day planner, fitting in with the whole stock trader theme. There are multiple profiles now too, so you can start anew if you wish or have friends or family play the game without mucking up your own profile. A new leveling system sees your character ranking up and earning rewards for achieving certain goals in the game.
The biggest addition to this update is a set of new gameplay mechanics. Swiping left and right to buy and sell stocks is still there, but intermittently you’ll receive an “Urgent Report" in your stack of stocks that must be tapped a certain number of times to tick boxes on a checklist, and then either swiped up or down depending on what it says on the report. Just keeping the whole left/right/green/red stock thing in order was tricky enough, but these new Urgent Reports throw a wrench into the system. A good wrench, mind you. Check out this very awesome trailer showing off the new stuff in The Firm version 1.1.
In addition to those major new features, there’s a lot of little stuff in the 1.1 update. An oft-requested colorblind mode has been added, as have some new music and sound effects and the ability to share your exploits on social media. If you weren’t a fan of the somewhat morbid ending when you failed in The Firm, which saw your character plummet to his demise out of his office window upon being fired, there’s now a “Happy Ending" option which removes that. If you find yourself needing a break during a game, you can now pause but it’ll come with a small penalty, so don’t go trying to abuse it.
Finally, Sunnyside has removed the consumable power-ups they added as IAP back in December noting that they “were not what we wanted to do initially with The Firm." They haven’t completely removed IAP however, as there’s now a new option to “tip" the developers a “cup of coffee" for 99¢ if you feel like throwing more money their way. If you haven’t checked out The Firm previously, it’s available for just a buck, and is a worthy addition for any fan of twitch games, especially given all the great new content added in this update.
