Inspiration

One of my 9 year old’s favorite games is to sneak up behind me while I’m working on the computer. Several months ago, I heard her coming, pretended I hadn’t, and quietly opened FaceTime so I could watch her approach behind me, like in a mirror… She realized she had been caught when FaceTime suddenly zoomed in on her face. She was both thrilled and completely surprised :))

That’s when I had the idea for Cheeky Sneaky and set out building it as a game that she would enjoy playing. We have had tremendous fun together since then. We accomplished tens of cheeky sneaking missions, crawling, sneaking, freezing, hiding, experimenting, and trying to fool the robot with increasingly ridiculous plans.

One of my favorite moments was when she hid behind the meshed back of my work chair. Because the game doesn’t notice extremely slow movement, she started inching forward behind the chair, convinced she had found the perfect hiding place. Then the robot suddenly detected her face through the mesh. We were completely surprised.

One time she drew a fake face and tried to use it as a decoy. On another mission she experimented with walking backwards, hiding her face from the robot. We even brought walkie talkies into the game. She would hide out of sight while I watched the robot and told her when it was safe to move towards the target. Suddenly the living room felt like a tiny spy mission.

I’ve fine tuned Cheeky Sneaky to react to motion and faces. When something moves, the robot becomes suspicious, but if you freeze quickly enough you might get away with it. If it sees your face, though, you only have about a second to hide before you are busted.

I designed the sound effects and music so that you can understand what the robot is doing without constantly looking at the screen. You hear when it is calmly scanning, when it becomes suspicious, and when you’ve finally been caught. There are also three difficulty levels for challenging the sneaky monkeys :)

My aunt used to call us cheeky monkeys when we were kids. That’s where the game world came from. I imagined cheeky monkeys sneaking for the bananas and a theatrical robot guarding the prize. But the world around the game is really whatever you make of it. You can set the game up in many different ways. Position the device so that it can see a play area with places to hide behind, crawl between and sneak around. I like putting the prize close to the camera, having my kid start far away, reach it without being detected, and then somehow make it all the way back again.

We often rearrange the room between rounds, moving furniture and creating new hiding places to improve the game. There’s no single way to play; the app provides the robot guard, but you can invent your own mission. I hope Cheeky Sneaky gives you a starting point for imagining many different worlds together with your kids.

I’m Fahri, the person behind Cheeky Sneaky. This is the first game I’ve ever published. I’m a designer and have been working on the web for the last 25 years. I also make an online design tool called Wordmark, which helps people choose fonts.

Cheeky Sneaky started with my daughter trying to sneak up behind me while I was working. I built the robot, but a lot of the actual game was invented afterwards while we were playing together. I hope the same thing happens in your home.

Warm regards,
Fahri Özkaramanli