Deepcover is a fun collection of familiar puzzle games with an interesting story and a unique hidden agenda.

We play as agents working at DART - the ”Digital Agency for Reducing Trickery”. This is a job that primarily consists of responding to victims of various scams and then completing minigames to track down the perpetrators.

The minigames include Candy Crush-style match-3, grid-based node connecting tasks, and fill-in-the-blank and Wordle-like word puzzles. These puzzles all play perfectly fine, although with a little less visual flare than in the more heavily monetized stand-alone versions you find on mobile.

Completing puzzles and missions earns us ”Intel”, which we use to buy powerups and cosmetic outfits for our agents.

Very quickly, however, the game reveals its true agenda; to educate us on the types of scams people fall for every day. To achieve that, each mission involves a victim telling the story of how they were scammed, whether it was by a fake tech support call, someone claiming to be a relative in dire straits, or something else entirely.

These stories are told without too heavy of a tone, and we eventually get the joy of tracking down the perpetrators, locking them up, and ensuring they set things right with the victims of their crime.

Deepcover is completely free, without ads or iAPs. And instead of watching ads, in-game currency can be earned by viewing short, entertaining videos further educating us on scams and identity theft threats.

As a part of the real-life DART (Deception Awareness and Resilience Tools platform), Deepcover is an incredible tool for educating those most vulnerable to scams. And hey, if you just love the specific minigames, Deepcover is also a great ad-free way to enjoy them.