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 most of the week working on my walkthrough for The Echo Bay Murders, so I didn’t get a chance to play too many other games. It’s also Christmas Eve and things are winding down with the end of the year, so I need to work on my Game of the Year list. But there’s still a lot to discuss, so let’s get to it.

Foregone

The first thing you might notice about Foregone is that it looks a lot like Dead Cells. And there are a lot of similarities, namely the gorgeous pixel art and the way you climb up and and down ladders to fight enemies. The main difference, though, is that it’s not a roguelite. You get to keep the gear you find instead of losing it when you die. For me, that makes a huge difference and would probably be enough to make me stick with the game — if the touch controls felt better to me. I love a lot about the game. It looks and sounds great, has fantastic voice acting, and there’s so much loot. It’s exciting to find a new weapon and know I can keep it. But the onscreen buttons are so small on my iPad that I keep missing them if I don’t look directly at them. You can move them around, but I couldn’t find any way to make them bigger. It led to a lot of frustration because I’d either have to watch the action and miss the buttons or watch the buttons and miss the action. There also doesn’t seem to be any iCloud sync, which is unfortunate for a game like this. It’s usually good both in longer and shorter spurts, so being able to swap between my iPad and iPhone would be nice. I might still try to give it more time, but unless something changes with the controls I’m not sure how far I’ll get. If you want you see what it looks like in action, you can watch some of my gameplay video below.

The Way Home: Dungeon Cat

The Way Home is a charming pixel art roguelite in which you play as a cat trying to help your human find the way home. It combines survival and crafting mechanics with dungeon crawling. But it’s also a roguelite. Each time you enter the dungeon, you start on floor 1 of 7. When you clear a floor of monsters, you can either leave or continue to the next floor, which is harder. The catch is, you only keep resources and learning points you collected. Any gear or abilities you acquired disappear when you leave the dungeon. It’s a bit repetitive because of that, and also less exciting when I find good armor or weapons, since I know they won’t last. It’s also pretty tedious to chop trees and mine ores one by one and slowly craft things like a furnace and anvil. Everything about it feels meant to drag it out. I was especially frustrated when I found a black hole in a dungeon and went through. I found something important, but I couldn’t see any way to return to the dungeon after. I was doing well, so it didn’t make sense to me to lose my progress in that dungeon just because I went through that portal. Again, I like a lot about the game, but I think it might be too repetitive and tedious for me to stick with it long term.

Wordsmyth

Wordsmyth actually released earlier this year, but I noticed it on sale for free and thought I’d give it a try. It’s meant to be a very relaxing daily word game and it is indeed that. Each day, you get nine letters and need to make as many words from them as you can. The game tells you how many words there are, and my first game had 110. The game looks great and feels great. My only real issue with it is that so many legitimate words aren’t accepted. I’m not sure why that is, but it made it less enjoyable for me than it should be. I might still stick with it and it’s easy to recommend at the price of free. But I have to see how much the in-game dictionary is going to annoy me before I commit to it long term.

Adventure Escape Mysteries – The Echo Bay Murders

As I said, I spent most of this week working on my walkthrough for the latest Adventure Escape game, The Echo Bay Murders. It’s a new Detective Kate Gray adventure in which she tracks down a another serial killer, this time one who hunts women. The puzzles have been pretty good so far, no major complaints. I’m almost done with my text walkthrough and then I’ll be able to start on the videos.

Lucky Pirate

I played some of Lucky Pirate a few weeks ago and liked the idea of it but found some aspects confusing. It since got a few updates so I wanted to give it another try. A few things have been made clearer, but I still find it a bit clunky to navigate and figure out which levels I’ve completed and which I haven’t. I’m also not a big fan of the idea of buying items at the end of one level to save for the next one. I would prefer each level to be self-contained. It could get tedious to have to replay an easier level just to make the next more doable. I also finally tried the Challenge mode and actually was enjoying it. But the game froze up on me near the very end and I never got to complete it. I tried starting over and the same thing happened. So it’s like I never even played that mode. I might give it another try when that bug is fixed, but I don’t think this game has long-term value for me personally. Still, it’s 100% free so try it for yourself.

Genshin Impact

And last, I continued playing Genshin Impact. There were two new events this week, both reruns of older events. They’re both fun, so I don’t mind. I’m also having a ton of fun playing as Itto, the latest character. I do regret trying to get his signature weapon, as I wasted a lot of primogems and got a weapon that isn’t really useful for me. It’s the first time I tried for a weapon on that banner and I think it was a mistake. But now I’m also wondering if I should keep trying so it wasn’t all for nothing. This is the part of the game I really don’t like. There’s so much love poured into the characters and world building and events and then they throw it all away with these predatory gambling mechanics. I’m still enjoying the game a ton and wouldn’t even mind supporting it more with my wallet. But even $100 doesn’t get you a guaranteed character or weapon of your choice. I hope they can tone down the monetization in the future so I can feel less gross about supporting the game. Anyway, that’s my two cents. I’m not going to stop playing, but it was a bit of an eye-opener.

And that’s everything I’ve been playing this week. I also finished the first season of Alice in Borderland, which answered absolutely zero questions. I was really hoping for answers, especially since I have no idea if a second season is planned. So that was disappointing. I also watched the movie Zodiac, which is about the Zodiac Killer. It kept me glued the whole time and I highly recommend it. I’ve now started American Horror Story 1984 and it’s a blast. Just so over-the-top. It’s just what I needed right now for my brain to relax. 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! And happy holidays to those who celebrate!