This week we want to showcase one of the fictional companies that operates right next to Joe's workplace, Firestream. Like any good techno-hipster populated startup, it's got snappy catch phrases, beanbags, and a slide in place of the stairs. You will be able to explore this cool and snazzy environment to get some information across the network but first you need to infiltrate it.

Firestream is one of the companies that rents a space in the building where Joe works, they provide Internet services to an array of different local businesses, but they are just starting out, and with growth comes cut corners, and lax security practice, gotta get ahead of the competition somehow!

In terms of visual tone and styling, where Joe works is blue, cold, sterile and lifeless, reflecting the mundane reality of his day-to-day. In contrast, Firestream is loud, colourful and built around the kind of startup culture that has become popular in Silicon Valley and in fact exported (somewhat tastelessly) around the worlds growing tech centres now. Slides instead of stairs, motivational stickers and Post-its littered around and break rooms that are almost more important than the actual work. Will that make them complacent and start ignoring security?

The entrance to the office, do they ever crawl up the slide, or strictly go down?

Budget constraints forced them to rely on an engineer who spent his lunch hours doodling. He drafted a few mascots, and surprisingly one of them stuck. His name was... wait, what was it again? Oh, right... Streamy! Hey Streamy!

The Firestream team had some fun thinking of tips to throw around the office.

He has quirky catchphrases such as "Don't use the USB you found in the gutter!" to help employees stop their nasty habit of getting compromised. His creator had only a single lunch break to bring him to life before diving back into the Firestream servers, but we love him anyway.

hmmmm... tempting.

Because Firestream is a local tech company, they have a close relationship with the city's telecom providers, and are happy to take a way-leave payment from them to mount particularly useful and relatively unguarded antennae on their rooftop.

New-age Pomodoro technique - 30 mins working, 30 mins foosball, rinse and repeat.

At the time that Joe enters the office it's going to be a Saturday. This means that most workers will be away and the place will be swarming with guards. One or two poor engineers will be working in the server rooms, which means that Joe will probably have to find a way to get around them.

The workers are also completely addicted to coffee, good thing the toilet is right next to the main server of Firestream, maybe we can push them to drink coffee and change their work pattern to make our lives easier.
More to come on Firestream, it not only appears in OFF GRID: Stealth Hacking, but also in our cyber security training spinoff OFF GRID: Red Team (http://www.offgridthegame.com/red-team) - where they are a key to the puzzle of extracting Autonomous Farming drone firmware from Aldrenna as part of some agricultural industrial espionage... but that's a story for another time!

And as always, if you haven’t already - be sure to wishlist Off Grid on Steam - each wishlist makes a big difference to us, and we really appreciate your support!

In our last sneak peek we touched on some of the new environments, but there's plenty more to show you and the more we do the more insight we get into the characters in this world, this week we want to give you a glimpse of our main character, Joe! And where do you get the most insight on someone's inner life? The bedroom!

Joe lives in the residential district, a normal happy going, totally-not-under-full-weight-of-a-surveillance-capitalistic-thumb suburban area for white collar workers of a satisfying and rewarding workplace.

Normally, our environment reflects a lot about our life, his choice of house is that reflection. He lives here with his daughter Jen, just a normal 2-bed house, probably spends half his salary on rent, maybe a little bit more, but that is because he takes pride in his house, after all a man's home is his castle.

Someone clearly used inspiration of an IGEA showroom.

Joe is self-sacrificing, he decided to give the bigger room to his daughter long ago. She is everything to him, since he is a single dad he mostly spends the living he scrapes together on her and just keeps the bare minimum for himself, but that's fine he has embraced the aesthetic of design minimalism as part of this monastic necessity. He has a little corner in the room to relax alone, but he doesn't really have time for that, it hold memories more than makes them.

An edgy past, spicy, looks like he wasn't just the typical Joe since birth.

Joe has a bit of a past, before becoming a dad, Joe has a bit of a rebellious streak. That is in his DNA and his daughter carries that flame, but is that candle still alight inside Joe?
The colour of the room is in direct contrast to Jen's, he uses a mostly Blue palette for his stuff, its a safe colour and he thinks that its fun, a bit different from the rest of the house. But when you look outside the window, it shows that he is just following along with the rest of the blue world.

Wait, there's only suits in there, does he sleep in a suit?

Joe didn't always work in accounts, but his job seems to have consumed him, literally. We've given him a very controlled environment, something he can keep safe, but events are about to unfold that will mean that can no-longer remain the case. Will you help him break out of this cage? Will he become the hacker he has to to help save his daughter? More explorations like this on the way. Drop us a line in the comments with your thoughts on the design of Joe's home!