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 were a lot of new releases this week, and some of them are quite good and worth grabbing. Things are still pretty slow with Genshin Impact at the moment, but that gave me a chance to play some new games and also continue others I started last week. There’s a lot to discuss, so let’s get started.

Arabilis

Arabilis is an arcade farming puzzle game in which you need to strategically plant crops against the clock and rack up points. I spent an hour with it so far and am really enjoying it, though I really need to improve my strategy and also work faster. The idea is to link same-type crops so that they grow, and if you get them to grow in a 3×3 grid you even get a super crop that’s worth more points. But you have to do all this before the harvest comes. It’s a little hard to explain it all, especially since I’m still getting the hang of it myself. But I recommend watching my video below to get a better idea of what it’s like. I definitely plan to play more of it because it’s quite compelling.

Adventure Escape Mysteries – Lost Ruins: Revenge on Atlantis

I was wondering when we’d see the next Adventure Escape game, and then yesterday an update came out of nowhere with a sequel to Dark Ruins, called Lost Ruins: Revenge on Atlantis. It follows Professor Burns and his students Xochi and Peter, as they explore the lost city of Zerzura. You need to solve ancient puzzles and disarm dangerous traps. I just started the third chapter in which Professor Burns gets possessed! So far, the puzzles have all been logical and there haven’t been any annoying mini games, so I’m enjoying it. I’ll be playing more over the weekend and updating my walkthrough here.

Legal Dungeon

Legal Dungeon first released back on PC in 2019 but got ported over to iOS this past week. I didn’t know much about it but I’ve enjoyed some of the developer’s other games so I was looking forward to playing it. I like the overall idea of the game, as it has you combing through case files to look for specific pieces of data and then prove a suspect is guilty. The problem is, it’s not always clear what the game wants from me and it makes it feel either rigged or like I don’t have much choice in what happens. For instance, in one of the cases, I had to prove that an old man who stole free newspapers knew that he was stealing them. But everything suggested that he thought they were trash and there was no actual intent to steal. In the end, it turned out I was supposed to prove that he didn’t intend to steal them, but I have no idea how I was supposed to know that since the game was telling me to do the opposite. That left a bad taste in my mouth and I’m not sure yet whether I’ll continue with it. But you can see what it’s like in my gameplay video below.

Shift Shaft

Shift Shaft is a match-three roguelite in which you mine rocks and fight monsters, trying to get through as many floors as you can before dying. In between runs, you can spend the currencies you collected to upgrade things like your health and luck. What really makes things interesting is that you can rotate the board, thereby controlling where your character goes. If you collect the ores below him, he’ll drop down. And if there’s an enemy below him, he’ll attack the enemy. But you need to be careful not to land next to an enemy instead or within its range of attack. There’s a lot of strategy involved, especially since more enemies spawn the longer you take to clear a floor. The official release date is March 15th, but the game is already available to purchase. I do recommend it, but I am a little concerned that the grind for upgrades might get tedious if the game doesn’t feel balanced without them. I guess I’ll have to see after I play more. I should definitely have further impressions for you next week.

Scaventurez

Scaventurez is a monster-taming match-3 RPG dungeon crawler. Yes, you heard me. You explore dungeons and fight monsters along with your pets by matching same-colored orbs. I like how the match-3 aspect is on a timer and you have to make as many matches as you can before the timer runs out. It shakes things up compared to the usual turn-based games. I also like convincing new creatures to join my party and fight alongside me. The problem is, the game doesn’t feel like it’s going anywhere. Each dungeon is unlocked through gold you collected in previous dungeons, but you start with a new character and creature for each one. I don’t feel like I’m actually making progress because I’m always starting over. And there isn’t enough variety in each dungeon to make me want to keep playing. I spent about three hours with the game so far and hour 3 felt very similar to hour 1. Everything just feels like more of the same. I’ll keep an eye on it to see if it gets any updates to improve it, but otherwise I think I’m done playing. That said, it’s completely free right now (with the option to tip the developers), so at least give it a try for yourself.

UNREAL LIFE

I started UNREAL LIFE last week and was really enjoying it so I continued playing this week. I’m not done with it yet, but I plan to stick with it to the end. There were a few slow points where I was running around looking for something specific, but overall I’m really impressed with the game and looking forward to playing more. You can see all my videos here and I’ll hopefully have final impressions for you next week.

Genshin Impact

And last, I continued my Genshin Impact journey and pulled for Kokomi on her banner. I got lucky and she showed up after around 50 wishes. Since I had more saved up for her, I spent another 40 trying to get Raiden constellations but failed. I might still try with more wishes, but I first want to see which characters are on the next update. Besides that, we have a bartending event going on right now that’s enjoyable enough but there’s only a few minutes of it each day. Thankfully the next update brings with it a whole new area called the Chasm, but it’s still three weeks away. So it’s probably going to be slow until then.

And that’s everything I’ve been up to this week. I also started watching Pieces of Her, which has great performances from Toni Collette but a bit of a silly plot. Still, it’s holding my attention enough so I’ll probably stick with it to see what happens. I’m starting to run out of things to watch on Netflix again, though, so I may have to switch to another service for a month or two. 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!