My Week Unwrapped: March 25, 2017

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I’m a few hours late (read: half a day) with My Week Unwrapped because I was busy playing games late last night. Hopefully it isn’t too confusing keeping the Saturday date at the top! I’m still catching up from the last few weeks of games, as well as some new ones. It’s a really, really good time to be an iOS gamer. I hope all the PC ports we’ve been getting mean developers are taking the platform more seriously, as there are a lot of games I want to play but still can’t get myself to do so on a PC. It’ll also be interesting to see if the race to the bottom can be reversed, as many of these games do seem to be selling pretty well. Anyway, enough about that. Here’s what I’ve been up to all week.

I’m still over the moon about being able to play Night School Studio’s supernatural narrative game, OXENFREE, on my iPad. I had been hoping it would come to iOS, but bought it on PC because I wasn’t sure it would ever happen. I’m so glad it did. I’m already on my second play-through, as things change if you “continue the timeline” after completing it once. I wrote up some quick thoughts and collected all the videos of my play-through here in case I don’t have the time to write a proper review.

Now that the move counter was added, I went back and completed my walkthrough for kunabi brother’s Euclidean Lands. It’s not a terribly long game, but it does some interesting things, I especially liked the spike levels. There seems to be a bug at the end that makes it confusing as to whether I actually completed the game. But otherwise, it was a pretty satisfying puzzle game. Not my favorite ever, but still glad I played it.

I’m still chugging away at Draknek’s relaxed yet deviously tricky train track puzzler, Cosmic Express. You can follow my progress with my walkthrough, though I’m taking my time with this one. It’s incredibly satisfying to finally solve a tricky puzzle, so I recommend trying to do so yourself before resorting to my walkthrough. You can also unlock all levels from the beginning, leaving very little reason to look for help. Either way, I highly recommend playing this one!

Boat Rocker Digital’s Orphan Black: The Game released this week, and it’s a turn-based puzzler in the vein of Lara Croft GO and Deus Ex GO. Though it would be easy to just pass it off as a clone (hardy har har), it has some fresh ideas of its own that I haven’t seen in the other games. Most notable is that as of yet, enemies can only be killed by using traps. You can’t sneak up behind them and kill them. Most of the puzzles have you using floor switches to change paths and move enemies where you need them. There are also different types of enemies and traps with their own unique behaviors. The game does a good job introducing each new mechanic slowly so you’re never overwhelmed. But the move counter for each level makes things much trickier. There were times I was so sure I couldn’t cut out two moves but eventually managed to do so by changing up my solution. My main complaints are that loading times when you restart a level can be a bit slow, and that the undo button is limited to one move. This is a step up from the GO series, since it means you can fix a single mis-tap or mis-swipe. But it still means you’ll be restarting levels over and over since there’s no way to just rewind a few moves and adjust your strategy. And as a fan of the show, I would have liked to see that aspect more fleshed out. As is, the Orphan Black theme doesn’t really add much to the game. It’s a shame, really, but that doesn’t detract from its solid puzzles. It also means that you don’t have to be an Orphan Black fan to enjoy the game. If you’re playing and get stuck, I’m in middle of making a walkthrough.

I’m still playing Zach Gage’s word game, Typeshift on a daily basis. If you haven’t tried it yet, you can read my review. But it’s free to download, so just do it.

And last, Rusty Lake released another free game in their surreal Cube Escape series, The Cave. I really enjoyed the first half of e game but am struggling with the second half in which you navigate a submarine. There’s a lot of levers and switches and it’s making my head spin. But it’s definitely worth checking out, especially if you’ve already played all the other games in the series. There’s some great atmospheric stuff going on as usual, and of course there’s poop. Because it wouldn’t be a Rusty Lake game without poop! I’m working on a walkthrough here if you need help.

And that’s it for this week! As you can see, it’s been pretty busy. If you’re wondering where the rest of some walkthroughs are, I haven’t abandoned them. I’m just trying to juggle everything. Unfortunately, unlike Tatiana Maslany, I don’t have any clones to help me out! But if there’s a specific one you’re waiting for, please let me know so I’ll know which ones to prioritize. Until next time, that’s My Week Unwrapped!

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