Hi everyone, and welcome back to My Week Unwrapped, where I discuss all the games I’ve been playing over the last seven days. Again I spent a lot of time with A Monster’s Expedition, but I still managed to squeeze in some other games. Some are worth your time, some less so. Let’s not waste any more time and get to the games!
Adventure Escape Mysteries: Picture Perfect
It had been a while since Haiku Games release another Adventure Escape game, but this week they brought us Picture Perfect, another Detective Kate Gray story. She attends a high profile wedding as security, but of course something goes wrong and she ends up fulfilling her role as detective. I’m on the fifth chapter so far and it’s enjoyable, though not quite as impressive or entertaining as The Covenant. As always, I’m working on a walkthrough here if you need help.
SWORDSHOT
I’d been looking forward to playing Crescent Moon’s SWORDSHOT for a while now, and while it certainly looks nice and is a great fit for mobile, I’m terrible at it. It’s a dungeon crawler in which each enemy is surrounded by guardians. You need to tap at the right moment to shoot your sword at the enemy, trying to avoid hitting the guardians instead. You have limited shots and lives, so you can’t just keep shooting without care. There are also bonus rounds you can unlock and perks you can purchase using the shards you earn, such as extra shots or lives. I think there’s definitely an audience out there for it, but I’m not it. Also, I should mention that if you play on an iPad, the black space on the sides are dead zones, so you have to tap in middle of the screen. It’s a bit of an inconvenience, but I imagine most people will be playing on iPhone anyway. You can watch some of my gameplay video below if you want to see what it’s like.
Similo: The Card Game
As a big fan of Horrible Guild’s Dragon Castle, I was thrilled to see they were releasing another game, this time the card game Similo. It’s a two-player co-op game in which one person gives hints and the other guesses. The idea is to give good enough hints so the other player can figure out which is the Secret Card. The artwork is great, and I can see this being an enjoyable game to play with friends. Unfortunately, I don’t have any friends playing it and it’s tough to get random games going with others. I would take my turn and then have to wait hours for the other person to take theirs. I eventually lost interest, but would happily play more if I could get some reliable friends playing. I have video of the tutorial, but it’s hard to recommend the game to anyone unless they have someone to play locally with using pass and play or know they’ll have friends to play online with.
Sadhana – The Way Back
ARTE Experience has a reputation of publishing some games that are off the beaten path. Their latest is called Sadhana, an Indian tale following the journey of a soldier named Svetaketu. He is trying to find inner peace and a better understanding of the world around him. I absolutely love the art style, and it’s definitely the best part of the game for me. The story is also interesting, but I found the gameplay to be a bit lacking. First off, the game never offers any explanation as far as controls go, so your only option is to try things and hope something works. To walk, you tap and hold on either the left or right side of the screen. To shoot an arrow, you tap on your character and pull back, like a slingshot. The puzzles are especially strange, as they have you drawing lines to connect dots. It took me a few puzzles to even understand what the goal was. They did get more interesting over time, but I was disappointed that the game allowed me to solve them in obviously unintentional ways. The game also only takes about 30 minutes to complete. It’s only $0.99, so that’s not a big deal. I just wish it was a more enjoyable experience. It might be worth playing for the artwork alone, but don’t expect to be blown away by the gameplay.
The Unfinished Swan
I spent some more time with Giant Sparrow’s and Annapurna Interactive’s The Unfinished Swan, and it continues to surprise me. I’m on the second chapter and instead of shooting paint, I’m now shooting water that evaporates after a few seconds. That means it’s harder to make out your environment and trickier to find the path you’re supposed to be following. It also seems to be getting more puzzle-oriented. Overall, I’m enjoying it but only playing a little at a time because it still gives me motion sickness. That’s also why I’m not worrying too much about finding all the balloons. Running around and looking for them would make my motion sickness much worse. Anyway, I look forward to playing more, but for now you can watch my latest gameplay video below.
Sky: Children of the Light
There’s a few notable things happening in Sky right now. First, there’s a new traveling spirit, the Twirling Champion from the Season of Lightseekers. I didn’t make a new video for him, but you can find my walkthrough for that season here. The bigger news, though, involves spoilers, so skip ahead if you don’t want to know anything about the next season. You’ve been warned! So we’ve started testing the Season of Prophecy in beta and it’s very different from anything you’ve experienced in Sky before. There’s a new cave in the Isle of Dawn, where you can find all four spirits (yes, there are four instead of six) and a new feature called Trials. There are four trials to complete and prove yourself worthy. They’re all challenging and your wings are clipped before embarking on them. I’ve only done the Trial of Water so far, and I died a few times but overall it wasn’t so bad. Thankfully, there are a lot of checkpoints, so if you die you don’t lose much progress. It was actually a lot of fun, but I’m scared of the other trials based on what I’ve been told. I’ll be working on them over the next week, so keep an eye out for some more videos. The new season also has some of the best masks in the game, and the ultimate gift mask is a jackal or Anubis with a glowing halo. I might actually have a reason to finally switch out my beloved deer mask! Anyway, you can watch my videos below if you don’t mind spoilers.
Terafyn
Terafyn is an upcoming RPG from South Gale that’s releasing on September 24th. I didn’t really know what to expect from it, but the hand-drawn art caught my attention. I was actually taken by surprise, as the writing sucked me in and before I knew it I had played almost an hour. The game is text-based but you do travel around and explore areas, each depicted by a hand-drawn scene. You meet characters, some join you, you can search each scene for any interesting items, and level up certain stats. The battles themselves involve cards, but also a sort of roulette wheel that determines how strong your attack is — and whether it hits at all. As I said, I’m really impressed with the writing, and I’m looking forward to playing more of it this week. Definitely give it a try when it releases, as the prologue is free and then there’s an IAP to unlock the first chapter. I’m not sure what that means, and whether it will end on a cliffhanger. Hopefully I’ll get far enough by release to be able to tell you. But for now I’m just excited to play more of it. You can watch some of my gameplay video below to see what it’s like.
A Monster’s Expedition
As I mentioned above, I spent the better part of my week playing A Monster’s Expedition on Apple Arcade. I finally made it to the end after solving hundreds of puzzles. But there’s still plenty more for me to solve! It’s an insanely big map. Anyway, I wrote a proper review here, so I’ll let you read that rather than rehashing it. But please play it.
Marble Knights
And last, I played some of the latest Apple Arcade release, Marble Knights, from Wayforward. It’s an action adventure game where you roll around on a marble, fight enemies and collect treasure. The touch controls are well thought out, as the whole left side works as a floating joystick, while you tap anywhere on the right side to attack. There’s also tilt controls as an option, but I’m not sure why anyone would choose that, especially since you can roll off the edge of a platform and die. I spent about twenty minutes with the game and didn’t have any steak feelings either way, but the boss battle dragged on a bit too long. I think he had like five or six phases and I was just losing patience. I don’t know if I’ll stick with it, as there are plenty of other games I enjoy more, but if it looks like something you might enjoy, give it a try. The multiplayer certainly looks more fun, so it might be worth playing with a friend.
And that’s everything I’ve been up to this week! I really wish I could clone myself so I could play even more games, as there’s always something I leave behind because there just aren’t enough hours in a day to play everything. Anyway, let me know in the comments section which games you’re enjoying and I’ll see you back here next time with more of My Week Unwrapped!
