My Week Unwrapped: February 6, 2021 – Titan Quest Legendary Edition, The Captain is Dead, Psycholonials, Tides and More

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Hi everyone, and welcome back to My Week Unwrapped, where I discuss all the games I’ve been playing over the last seven days. There haven’t been a ton of new games this week, but there’s still plenty to cover. The highlight for me was the Legendary Edition of Titan Quest, though I’m happiest about the improvements that were added to both versions of the game. I’ll talk more about that below. I’m also still playing Genshin Impact and reviewed some games I’d finished the previous week. I also wrote my first Apple Arcade roundup of the year and played through this week’s Apple Arcade release, as well. So pull up a chair and enjoy!

Titan Quest: Legendary Edition

A while back, I bought the re-released version of Titan Quest on iOS and spent a few hours with it on my iPhone. I forgot about it, though, in part because I didn’t like being stuck playing it on my iPhone all the time. I chose that because there was no iCloud sync and I preferred portability. But HandyGames released a new version this week called the Legendary Edition, which includes all three DLCs from other platforms. That alone is exciting, but for me the real game-changer was the addition of iCloud sync and other quality of life improvements. The iCloud sync even works between both versions of the game, so I was able to import my save from one to the other and vice versa. In fact, the two apps seem to be exactly the same, with the sole difference being whether you get all the DLCs included in the price or have to pay for them separately. Since it had been a while since I last played, I decided to start a new game and focused on the Nature mastery because I like having pets help me. So far, I have two wolves fighting by my side while I shoot enemies with a fire staff and I’m really enjoying it. Being able to play on my iPad at home and still have the game in my pocket makes a huge difference. It also feels great on my iPad, thanks to a floating joystick that allows me to hold my iPad the way that’s comfortable for me. The game just feels great now and it’s so easy to lose an hour or more to it just exploring, killing things and looting equipment. If you haven’t bought either version yet, just figure out if you want all the DLCs right away or would rather first try the base game and see how you like it.

The Captain is Dead

Thunderbox Entertainment have been doing some great work digitizing board games and bringing them to iOS. I’m especially a fan of Tsuro, so I was happy to see they had another game out, The Captain is Dead. I never played the physical game and I was coming to this completely fresh. I do like a lot about it, especially the sense of humor. The idea is that you’re playing the last 10 minutes of your favorite sci-fi TV show but everything is going wrong and the captain is dead. You need to choose four characters to take with you and then take a turn with each one to try and fix up the ship and prevent aliens from taking over or destroying it. I only played through the tutorial and one game, but it went horribly wrong. I still need to get better acquainted with it and will try to make some time for a few “quick” runs to see if that helps. You can watch my gameplay video below to see what it’s like and I’ll update you when I have further impressions.

Psycholonials

One might have a hard time arguing that Psycholonials is a game, since you don’t do anything besides tap the screen to progress the story. It’s more like a digital graphic novel. That said, I still found the writing compelling enough to play through the existing chapter in one sitting. It takes place in April 2020, just as the coronavirus changed the world and countries started implementing lockdowns. It follows a young woman who lose her job in the restaurant industry and has spent her time since trying to build her online “brand,” which basically boils down to her social media presence. She’s actually really mean to some of her followers and I’m not sure I like her as a person, but she’s still interesting as a character. The first chapter also ends on quite the cliffhanger, so I’m eager to see what’s next. The developer seems to have the chapters planned on a weekly release schedule, similar to a TV series. I kind of like that, but that may make it harder for people to justify shelling out ten bucks when only the first chapter is out. Still, you can watch some of my videos below to help you decide and I’ll be sure to share more impressions as new chapters are released.

Tides: A Fishing Game

I really liked Tides at first. It’s a relaxing fishing game where you travel to different islands and catch various types of fish, then trade them in for coins. Meanwhile, back on your home island, you can hire assistants to fish and warn you coins while you’re away. You can also upgrade your boats and unlock new islands. The early part of the game has a nice rhythm to it and I made some nice progress. But I’ve now caught all the fish on the four islands available to me and then next one costs 500,000 coins to unlock. Fishing the same few fish over and over to earn that much just doesn’t appeal to me, so instead I’ve just not played for several days now. I just open it once or twice a day to collect my idle earnings and close it. It seems to me like the developers tried to stretch out the small amount of gameplay available by locking content behind these huge costs. Without those huge roadblocks, it could be completed in a couple of days. It’s still a nice, relaxing diversion, but it’s a shame that they couldn’t think of a better way to make the game last than a ridiculously huge grind. Anyway, it’s free and the ads and IAPs are optional, so at least give it a try.

IrisFall

I wrote about w in last week’s roundup, but I’ve since had the chance to review it properly. I really enjoyed it, even if many of the puzzles were easy. But rather than repeating myself, I’ll just refer you to my review.

Genshin Impact

There 1.3 update arrived in Genshin Impact this week, bringing with it a new playable character named Xiao, along with his banner that allows you to gamble for him. There’s also a new boss that drops upgrade materials for him, and a new photography event that asks you to snap photos of different things each day. For instance, you might need to get capture red flowers or blue creatures with your Kamera. It’s a fun little event that I’ve been enjoying. Aside from that, I’m still chipping away at world exploration, trying to find everything I’ve missed.

Sky: Children of the Light

There isn’t much to say about Sky this week, but I got video in beta of the new version of the luck dragon that drops colored balls instead of crabs. They also announced that the Days of Fortune event starts this Monday! So you should be able to witness it firsthand soon.

lumen.

This week’s Apple Arcade release is one I’ve been looking forward to, a laser-reflecting puzzler called lumen. The whole game takes place inside a box reminiscent of The Room series and each level you solve reveals a frame of film. Each chapter tells a story about one of Olivia McLumen’s inventions, such as the shoe brush or apple picker. My favorite is the last one, as I relate to it quite a bit — she makes an automatic cat feeder because her cats keep waking her in middle of the night! The puzzles themselves are pretty easy for most of the game, but the difficulty ramps up around level 100. I enjoyed my time with it, though there were a few quality of life improvements I’d like to see. Overall, I’d recommend it, though. And if you get stuck on any levels, I have a full walkthrough here. And don’t forget to read my Apple Arcade Unwrapped piece that covers NUTS and some other games.

Heaven’s Vault

And last, I spent more time with Heaven’s Vault on my Switch. I’m still thoroughly enjoying it and explored a few new areas and found a lot of new inscriptions. Unfortunately, my last session crashed after about an hour of sailing and collecting artifacts from ruins and I lost a big chunk of progress. The developer is looking into it and can hopefully figure out what happened to prevent it from happening again. I’ll probably take a short break from it before reclaiming what I lost, but I don’t think I’m willing to just abandon the game at this point. I’ve come too far and I want to see it all play out. Anyway, I still recommend the game, but just be aware that the Switch version does have a few bugs to iron out.

And that’s everything I played this week! I still need to do my Genshin dailies and make more progress in Titan Quest this weekend. Let me know what games you’re playing and I’ll see you back here next tome with more of My Week Unwrapped!

This Post Has 6 Comments

  1. Sam

    Well if you want to cheese Tides – A Fishing Game, you can manually set your phones clock ahead and keep returning to the app to get money. Use the money to upgrade your assistants to do make even more money.

    1. AppUnwrapper

      Haha itΓÇÖs tempting, but any time I mess with the clock like that, it screws up other things so I prefer not to.

  2. Sam

    And the last island costs 7.5 mil to unlock! lol

  3. Puzzle Fan

    I’ve been lurking on your page for a long time, like a few years. You’ve grown a lot. Everytime I want a new FUN game to play, I check your page. I’ve been always surprised, whenever I’d be googling solutions for a puzzle I was stuck on, your name always popped up. And the games you recommend are always fun. I played and bought most of the stuff on your masterlist, I wanna say I’m not disappointed. And great brains you have, for solving all those puzzles.

    Keep up the good work, appunwrapper! I’m sure it can’t always be easy.

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