My Week Unwrapped: December 31, 2016

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Hi everyone! Welcome to the very last installment of My Week Unwrapped for 2016! It’s been a hell of a year, and there have been a ton of fantastic games. I’m still working on my Games of the Year list, which I meant to have out already. But this week ended up being a busy one, so it’ll have to wait until next week. Meanwhile, there are still some great games on sale or for free, so make sure to check out my holiday sales list.

First off, I played through most of Ertan Unver’s one-handed puzzle game, LVL. I really like the idea of it, but it started to feel very repetitive, so I lost the urge to finish it. Each level consisted of three puzzles, and I finished more than forty of the fifty levels, so I still solved over a hundred-and-twenty puzzles before I lost interest. Not bad! I’ll probably come back to it on day, but for now I’m taking a break. You can see the start of my walkthrough guide here. Each level is a cube, with two sides of each color — red, green, and yellow. The idea is to move e Tetris-like pieces around so that both sides together fill up the whole square with that color. It starts off easy, but gets trickier as you progress, especially when permanent pieces are added to the mix in the center of the cube. You can see it in action in my video below.

I also spent a little time with Fine All Day’s Sunpolis, which has a gorgeous art style similar to that of Alto’s Adventure. The controls are a little hard to get used to at first, and I’m still getting used to them, but if you like endless runners, Sunpolis offers an interesting twist on the genre. It also has checkpoints instead of making you start from scratch each time you die, so that takes off some of the pressure and makes it feel more relaxed. You can see some gameplay video below. Make sure to also check the comments on that video, because the developer left a whole bunch of tips in there.

As I was looking through all the games I’ve played in 2026, I got sucked back into Fallen Tree Games’ unique match-three puzzler, Swapperoo. What makes it so different from others is that the pieces come in three shapes — triangle, square, and circle. The squares can’t be controlled directly. The triangles work as arrows, swapping places with the piece they’re pointing at when you tap them. And the circles disappear when you tap them. This means a lot of through has to go into each move or you can end up stuck in a situation where you can’t do anything. I forgot that the had gotten an endless mode, which is where it truly shines. I made some gameplay video of a high score around 250,000. If you’re a match-three fan and haven’t picked up Swapperoo yet, I highly recommend it.

Last year, I played Please Don’t Touch Anything and really enjoyed it. Recently, the publisher, Bulkypix, went bankrupt, but the developer, Escalation Studios, took control over the game. They also released their VR version without the VR as Please, Don’t Touch Anything 3D. I played a little bit and so far it does seem like the same puzzles. So it’s hard to recommend shelling out the entry fee again if you have the original. If you don’t have either, though, you might want to consider this one, as it’s more immersive. It does have more distractions in the room compared to the original, since there are now a lot of extra things in the room that aren’t related to the puzzle. I should also note that I hit a bug at the end of the video below, but when I rebooted the app, everything seemed fine. In any case, I’m glad to see iOS got some love, as I see no reason why this would be limited to VR when it plays just fine as a regular 3D game.

I finally picked up Warp Shift by Fishlabs ad Isbit Games, since it’s the free app of the week. I originally skipped it because it looked a bit bland, and I thought the move counters would annoy me. To a degree, I was right on both accounts. I’m still enjoying the game, but I prefer my puzzles to be relaxed, and this one does frustrate me when I end up replaying the same level over and over to try and get three stars. An “undo” button would have helped relieve some of the repetitiveness of this. But there are some solid puzzles here and it’s free right now, so it would be silly not to take advantage of it and at least try it out. You could also see my walkthrough-in-progress here.

And last, I missed the release of Haiku Game’s latest adventure game, Adventure Escape The Christmas Killer , so I’m playing it a week after Christmas instead of before. This one seems longer than their previous ones, and they’ve included some pretty tricky puzzles. I’m enjoying it so far and nearly done with my walkthrough if you need some help. Like all their games, it’s completely free, but you can buy extra stars for hints. If you like adventure games, I recommend picking it up.

And that’s it for 2016! This weekly post is a new thing I’ve been trying over the last few months, and I hope you’re enjoying it and finding it useful. If you are, please let me know! Feedback helps me improve this site and ensure that I’m spending time on things people want to see. I’m always open to recommendations, and love hearing from my audience. Here’s to another great year at AppUnwrapper.com and I hope you all have a wonderful New Year! I’ll see you in a few days with my Games of the Year list!

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