Deus Ex Go

The player touches the screen to move Adam Jensen, a protagonist from the stealth combat, cyber-dystopian Deus Ex series, between nodes on a hexagonal grid towards an exit. If moved to a specific node, the character will stealthily take down guards, hack computers, and activate his human augmentations, such as invisibility. Enemies who spot Jensen will move towards and, if they reach his node, eliminate him. Alternatively, Jensen can eliminate enemies if approaching from behind or their side. In the game's story, which is set before the events of Deus Ex: Mankind Divided, Jensen's sole mission is to save an important person, but is continually set back by puzzles—54 in total.

The puzzles grow in complexity by adding complications to several simple mechanics. Mechanical enemies and obstacles, such as gun turrets and raisable platforms, are hackable via computer terminals on nearby nodes. The player drags their finger on the touchscreen to connect the terminal's node and the hackable device. The character can store a power-up to move for two turns without detection while in an enemy's line of sight, activate terminals remotely, or use projectile attacks against guards on distant nodes.

Deus Ex Go follows the premise behind Square Enix Montreal's previous Go mobile series titles—Lara Croft Go (2015) and Hitman Go (2014)—in distilling the essence of the series' core gameplay for turn- and touchscreen-based puzzles. The Deus Ex Go development team was split between employees who had worked on Hitman: Sniper and those who had worked on the Go series. Their combination was expected to resolve philosophical differences between the teams stemming from indie and AAA traditions of game development and pricing. Throughout development, the team asked themselves whether the Go elements felt as if they belonged to the Deus Ex series.

The team sampled several kinds of hacking mechanics before deciding to use terminals that modified each puzzle rather than performing single-use instrumental kills. They also decided to add a narrative—the first in the Go series—drawing from its importance in the main series. Several elements from the series did not translate well to mobile, such as player choice, which had too many possibilities to suit the game's puzzle-solving. The team also invested in tools that made puzzle construction easier.

Prior to the game's release, Ryan McCaffrey (IGN) wrote that the Go series composed the "smartest" mobile entries of a high-budget, major video game series. Critics who previewed the game found it to be on par with the other Go titles. Colin Campbell (Polygon) said that previews of the game matched the series' aesthetic.

The game received "generally favorable" reviews, according to video game review aggregator Metacritic. Reviewers wrote that the game successfully captured the cybernetic dystopia of the Deus Ex series and the brain-teasing puzzles of the Go mobile game series. Compared to the other entries in the Go series, reviewers considered Deus Ex Go's added story to be lackluster, its aesthetic to be less visually interesting, and its length to be shorter. While some reviewers tired of the Go series, others thought Deus Ex Go continued the high standards of its forebears.