Hi everyone, and welcome back to My Week Unwrapped, where I discuss all the games I’ve been playing over the last seven days. I spent much of my time with the Apple Arcade game, SP!NG, as once I got into the groove, it was hard to put down. I’m not through with it yet, but getting there! I’ve also continued playing Titan Quest, though I did take a bit of a break from Genshin Impact for most of the week. There aren’t too many new games to discuss here, but there still might be something for you to try. You may have also noticed that this roundup is out on a Friday. I’m going to try and stick to Fridays from now on so I’m not working on it on the weekend. That also means you’ll be able to get an idea of which games to pick up for the weekend before the weekend starts!

Giant Dancing Plushies

I’m not particularly good at rhythm games, but I still had to try Rogue Games’ Giant Dancing Plushies. I mean, who can resist playing as a huge stuffed animal dancing through the streets and smashing cars? And, compared to other rhythm games I’ve tried, it’s pretty forgiving. You need to swipe to move your plushie, but to the beat of the music. If you’re off, you’ll get docked stars, but that really only seems to affect your rewards. And there are a lot of rewards. I’m actually turned off by the endless upgrades you unlock that make the game feel like it was originally intended to be a free-to-play experience. You upgrade your plushie’s level, unlock new skills for them, upgrade the skills, and on and on. I felt like I spent more time collecting stuff than actually playing. It’s also weird because if you get killed by a tank, you lose the level. But you don’t get to try the same level again. They appear to be randomized. After a few levels and a ton of upgrades unlocked, I just didn’t feel the urge to keep playing. If you like rhythm games, though, and don’t mind an endless grind for upgrades, you might enjoy it. It’s not actually free-to-play, so you earn everything through playing, not IAPs. Anyway, you can watch some of my video below to see what it’s like in action.

Arcane Golf

Golf is another genre that I don’t really gravitate to, but there have been some games that I enjoyed, such as Golf Club Wasteland. I liked the pixel art style of Arcane Golf, as well as the idea of miniature golf that takes place in a fantasy world with dungeons and traps. I also appreciate that the levels — so far — all take place on a single screen. I do like the overall idea of the game, and the puzzles I played so far seem well-designed. What I don’t like is the control scheme, and it was enough to turn me off from the game after just a few minutes. It has the familiar slingshot controls you expect from a golf game. But what I’m not fond of is that the arc that shows you where your ball will go is super short. No matter how much you pull back, you only get a tiny arc. It makes it really hard for me to estimate where it will go, leading to lots of trial and error. On top of that, the power meter is displayed as tiny numbers, and you have to guess from that how strong your pull is. I don’t get any good feedback from it and, again, feel like I’m just guessing. What makes it even harder to get used to is that if you’re hitting your ball off a piece of slime, it slows it down considerably. So even at 100% power, it barely seems to move. Or at least, that was my experience on some levels. If you then go back to hitting a floating ball, you’re probably going to pull back too much and send it flying way too fast. Again, the arc looks the same in both situations, so you won’t really see the difference until you let go. And I had one other small but annoying issue with it. I was playing on my iPad, and the controls allow me to hold the device with a hand on each side. But in between levels, you have to press a button in middle of the screen to go to the next one. So it broke up my rhythm, forcing me to let go of my iPad with one hand after every level just so I could tap that button. The buttons are all pretty small for an iPad, too. These things could probably be fixed in an update, so it’s not too bad. But without more feedback from the slingshot controls, I doubt I’ll be revisiting this one.

Dead Man’s Phone

About a year ago, I played some of the “found phone” mystery, Dead Man’s Phone, in beta. I was impressed with it, but confused about a few things. At the time, it seemed to have a free-to-play model, where you earned points that allowed you to do certain things, like skip wait times. Well, they’ve been working on the game since and now it’s close to release, coming to iOS and Android on March 31st. I played through the first episode again and was thrilled to see that the game is now completely free. The beta version has IAPs to unlock the episodes past the first one, but I’ve been told there actually won’t be any ads or IAPs for the first season. The points system also seems to be gone and you can skip wait times without any catch. So if you like to feel like the story is playing out in real time, you still can. But those of us who prefer to play through without waiting can fast track it. The game is written well and has some parts voice acted, though most is text only. You look through text messages on the phone and also conduct interviews with suspects. I’m looking forward to playing through the rest of the game and will definitely update you on my impressions as I do so. You can watch some of my gameplay video of the first episode below to see what it’s like.

Titan Quest: Legendary Edition

I’m still having a ton of fun with Titan Quest, and now am able to summon three wolves at my side if I find a Shrine of Mastery to temporarily increase my mastery points. It’s still exciting to loot a shiny new piece of gear with great stats. Im now close to the end of the third act and the battle with the third Telkine. I’m a bit nervous about the fourth act from what I’ve heard from others. I may need to finally invest some of the attribute points I’ve accumulated and maybe finally choose my second Mastery. I’ve been planning Dream from the start, but I’ve been afraid to choose it in case I change my mind. I may do a bit more research into it first. Anyway, I would still highly recommend this game. I’ve put around 50 hours into it and am not bored yet. You can see all my videos in this playlist.

Psycholonials

Chapter 5 of Psycholonials released this week and I’m still playing it to see where it goes, but I can’t say like the main character much. I’m honestly not even sure how to sum up the story at this point. She’s working with her best friend to steal all of her friend’s parents’ money. She keeps shooting cops just to not get caught for shooting a cop. She pulls other people into her insanity. And just generally doesn’t feel very remorseful about any of it. I’m basically sticking with it at this point just to see where the author takes it, but I’m not emotionally invested in these characters. You can see all my videos of the game here if you want to get an idea of it before purchasing.

Sky: Children of the Light

There’s not much to report in Sky this week. The Season of Dreams is about to end and the Season of Assembly is in progress in beta. The Days of Bloom is also being tested in beta and I made new videos for the updated sapling quests, as well as one to show off the cherry blossom tree at home. You can also see the new rain boots in my latest videos.

Genshin Impact

I’ve mostly been taking a break from Genshin Impact because I feel a bit burnt out after all the events. I’d like to stick to playing a couple of times a week instead of every day. That might keep me from feeling chained to it. I also want to save up and try to win Venti when his banner arrives, but I don’t know that my luck is good enough to make that happen. Either way, I don’t want to force myself to play every day just to get the primo gems for him. I do enjoy the events themselves, but doing the same stuff every week for upgrade materials or primo gems is starting to get old. But we’ll see what the future holds.

SP!NG

And last, but certainly not least, I picked up the Apple Arcade game, SP!NG, earlier in the week to continue where I left off last week and ended up playing another 70 levels in one day. I’ve since made it almost to level 150 with all three stars on each level. I think it’s safe to say this game has hooked me (pun intended). While I haven’t made a proper walkthrough yet (I may wait to see if they add landscape mode on iPad), I’ve been recording a lot of individual levels and uploading them to my YouTube channel. Hopefully the walkthrough will be complete at some point, but for now you can try and see if I have the one you’re stuck on. I’ve also been sharing unhappy failures on my Twitter account if you want to share in my misery. I have a few criticisms about the game — namely that you often can’t see what’s up ahead until it’s too late. But overall, it’s a fantastic game with clever level design and perfect controls, so I never feel like it’s the game’s fault if I fail. Definitely give this one a go if you have an Apple Arcade subscription.

And that’s everything I’ve been up to this past week! I’m hoping to finish SP!NG this coming week if it doesn’t break me and there’s also some other notable releases coming, including Cozy Grove on Apple Arcade. And, of course, I’m still playing lots of Titan Quest. 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!