Somehow another week has passed and it’s Saturday again! That means it’s time for My Week Unwrapped, where I talk about everything I’ve been playing over the last seven days. I’ve been very busy, but some of that time was spent on games releasing next week and I can’t talk about all of them yet. Still, there’s plenty of great stuff to go over.
First off, I played more of Tavern Guardians by Wombo Combo Games, with my best game currently being tavern 33. I didn’t record that game, but you can watch the end of my tavern 18 game below. I’ve gotten a bit burnt out on it even though it really is a great game. It’s just that it takes so long to get back to the higher level taverns, that I’ve kind of lost interest. It all starts to feel the same after a while. I’m hoping maybe they’ll make some changes that will give it more longevity for me. Either way, I still got more than my money’s worth.
I played through the twelve short levels of Creatiu Lab’s Rhom Bus and then spent a good amount of time with the endless mode, enough to get a score of over 2.6 billion points, which was number four on the leaderboards at the time. I may go back to it in the future, but once I got a score like that, I felt like there wasn’t much more to get out of the game. Still, it’s a refreshing puzzler if you’re looking for a new relaxed high score chaser.
JoyCastle’s Alice in Wordland is a pretty word game that I’m not in love with, but is worth checking out since it’s free. They also improved the hidden word mode, allowing you to cycle through the different puzzles using arrows instead of having to clumsily tap on each flower. Some of the word choices are odd, such as the one with the “Watergate” hint. They don’t really fit the watercolor and flowers theme. Check it out to see if it interests you. I’m also working on a walkthrough here.
I made some more progress in Wadjet Eye Games’ Shardlight, which is coming to iOS on March 8th. If you’re a fan of third person point-and-click adventures with dark themes, definitely keep an eye out for it next week.
I really wanted to love Nexon Mobile’s low-poly puzzler, After the End: Forsaken Destiny. It looked like something that was perfect for me, but I felt I was constantly battling the controls instead of working out the puzzles. My first experience with it had me moving the camera instead of the joystick because the default settings have the joystick area set really small on an iPad. Once I changed the settings, things improved, but I still found the game too frustrating to be fun. You need to constantly rotate the camera to see where you’re going. There are also traps, such as spikes, that can kill you, enemies that also can kill you, and you can walk off ledges because you didn’t rotate the camera to see exactly where you can walk. There’s also paths hidden inside and, even though you can see an outline of your character at those points, I found everything too clumsy to be enjoyable. I ended up quitting after these two videos I made. Still, others seem to be enjoying it, so if you’re not normally bothered by these things, you may still want to give it a try.
And last, I’ve really been enjoying Spelkraft’s open world relaxing puzzler, Pan-Pan. You play as a woman crash-landed on some bizarre planet, and right away you get to work solving puzzles and doing fetch quests for the regulars. You just tap to move and she runs quickly to that spot. You also tap on items to pick them up, as well as to place them down. So it’s essentially a one-handed game. There are no words or instructions, though. Instead, you have to pay attention to shapes, symbols, how creatures behave, etc. You’ll also unlock some tools on your travels, allowing you to access more areas. Overall, I’m having a great time with the game. My only real complaints is that it’s stuck in portrait mode on both iPhone and iPad and has no iCloud sync. If I could play the same game on my iPhone in portrait and then switch to my iPad in landscape mode, it would be just about perfect. As is, i get lost sometimes because I can only see a small area at a time. Either a map or the ability to zoom out more would be nice. But since it’s a very relaxing game, it’s not really frustrating to get lost. From what I’ve played so far, I would highly recommend it to puzzle fans. And if you need help, I’m working on a walkthrough here.
And that’s everything! Next week I’ll finally be able to talk about the game I was playing these past couple of weeks, as well as some other games I’d like to pick up. Until then, I hope this recap helped you find some good games to play over the rest of the weekend. Until next time, that’s My Week Unwrapped!
