Play nowPsychological thriller15 stopsAround your own homePocket caseAges 15+Free
Stay on the Line
An ALWAYS game
An ALWAYS game, based on Always Home by D.J. Cole
A free psychological thriller you play around your own home: lock down every device in your house before it finishes learning you, with after-hours support on the line until first light.
“Hi, it's Tess from Ambry Home, ringing back about your ticket. You said your front door unlocked while you were out. Okay. I'm going to stay on the line with you tonight. Put the lights on, and keep your phone in your hand.”
15+. A psychological thriller played in your own home. It deals with stalking, surveillance, someone controlling your home and not being believed. There are knocks, whispers and sudden sounds. No violence and no gore. Play with the lights on, stay inside, and never open or lock a door for the game. If someone is watching or controlling you through your devices for real, 1800RESPECT can help: 1800 737 732.
Stay on the Line
Your front door unlocked tonight while you were out. The app says so. At 11:31pm you lodge a support ticket, and at 11:36pm after-hours support rings back. It's Tess, and she stays on the line with you, between her other calls, until first light.
Together you lock down every device in your house before it finishes learning you: the smart lock, the router, the speaker, the TV, the power board, the lights, the doorbell camera, the fridge, the robot vacuum, your watch, your digital wallet, the smoke alarm, your phone, your account, and the lock again. Fifteen devices, a different short game for each, and the house fights back as you go.
Each one comes with a card on what that kind of device really records. Stay on the Line is set some years before Always Home, the first ALWAYS book by D.J. Cole. You don't need to have read it, and the game spoils nothing.
Good forA night inThriller and horror fansRainy daysPlaying anywhere in Australia
What you'll do in this at-home thriller
Combination locksCrack the code on a padlock, a keypad or a safe.
Point the phoneFace the right way, line up a landmark or tilt to pour.
Shake, flip and spinSome locks open with a move, not a code.
Against the clockSome stops give you a countdown. Beat it.
Characters, devices and the company are fictional.
The book behind the game
Always Home
by D.J. Cole
The smart home knew her schedule. Then it learned her fears.
At 4:47am, Nora Vass wakes to find her front door open, and every sensor in her house insisting nobody was there. Always Home is book one of the ALWAYS series, a psychological thriller set in the Adelaide Hills.
Caloundra, late 1942. The lighthouse keeper rings you in the night: something in his own log is wrong, and he needs a stranger's eyes. Five puzzles, three phone calls, one night. Free, and it plays anywhere.
5.10am in Noosa, and the middle hook in the surf shed is empty. The paddle-out is at 6.30. Pops wrote everything down: follow sixty years of Noosa surf to find his board in time.
A tin box in a beachcomber's shed at Dicky Beach, and a letter from a ship's boy who was aboard the SS Dicky when the storm drove her ashore in 1893. Open it, and follow him through the gale.
A $2 shoebox from a garage sale: tapes, logbooks and a badge from the Night Owls Sky Watch Club, and four strange lights logged on one winter night in 1974. You are the club's new duty officer.
