Hi everyone, and welcome back to My Week Unwrapped, where I discuss all the games I’ve been playing over the last seven days. This week was fairly quiet, as I played more Knotwords, previewed a game 10 years in the making, and spent way too much time in Genshin Impact‘s Spiral Abyss. Still, there’s plenty to discuss, so let’s not waste any more time.

Chloe Puzzle Game

Besides Knotwords and Genshin Impact, Chloe was the game I spent the most time with this week. It’s a turn-based puzzle game in which you need to get two toys to the goals in each level. It starts off with just Chloe, and you simply swipe to move her around. There are obstacles in her way, though, such as wind-up toys that move along a track one tile each time Chloe moves. If she lands on the same tile as one of them, she’ll die and you’ll have to start the level over. As you progress, you’ll encounter other toys like cats that follow you around, strongmen that crush you if you enter their area, and even riflemen that shoot you when you land in their line of sight. There are also tools you can use to help you, like bombs, balloons and even a giant claw machine. I was impressed by how many different mechanics come together to offer all sorts of different challenges throughout its 72 levels, keeping it from getting stale. My only real issue with the game is the lack of an undo button. It’s very easy to make a small mistake, even a mis-swipe, and then have to restart the level. On smaller levels it’s not a big deal, but there are some that take quite a few moves and it both makes it hard to experiment and also tedious to keep doing the starting moves over. I’m currently on the final level and completely stumped because everything I can think of fails. I want to keep working at it, but the lack of an undo button is making it hard to do so. I’ll still come back to it and hopefully have an epiphany after a break. And I still highly recommend the game. It’s only $1.99 and explores some great ideas. You just need a little patience with it because of the frequent restarts. I also have more videos here if you want to see what it’s like or need help with a specific level.

Candy Disaster TD

Candy Disaster TD is a tower defense game in which you help Jick, a mad scientist, lay traps to collect the energy candies that scattered across the galaxy. You need to defeat waves of enemies and prevent them from getting through the exit. I’ve played a fair number of tower defense games before, but this feels different in many ways. I’m still early on, but the trap that can push enemies into water really changed things up. It’s also satisfying to see three enemies launch into the air at once, or step on spikes together and explode into bodily parts. I do wish there was a way to see the paths they’ll take before starting, though. I can’t seem to find a way to do so, and I keep getting surprised by enemies spawning in new locations. The difficulty also ramped up pretty quickly and I wish the game actually introduced each new trap instead of forcing me to experiment to see what they all do. But there is good fun to be had here and I think I’ll continue playing. There’s also a free-to-play version you can try if you don’t want to shell out the money for it right away.

Avolteha

Avolteha is the game I got to preview this week. I heard of it years ago when it was expected to release in 2018, but then it fell off my radar until this week. After 10 years in development, it now has an actual release date and is even available to pre-order. I played through the first fifteen minutes and was going to play more since but life got in the way. Still, I’m hoping to spend more time with it this weekend. I wrote up some thoughts here, so I’ll let you read that rather than repeating myself.

Skeletal Avenger

Skeletal Avenger released a little while back but it was on sale for $0.99 this week so I grabbed it. It’s a roguelite in which you earn perks, equipment and gold each run and try to survive as long as you can. When you die, you lose the perks but can use the gold you earned to upgrade different things like health, defense, attack, even the perks themselves. It’s a pretty fun game, even if I am pretty awful at it. My favorite part was throwing my skull at enemies, especially when I had the perk that set it on fire or made it leak a puddle of corrosive liquid. Unfortunately, I was getting motion sickness from it and I’m not even sure why. It is 3D, but it’s an overhead view, so I really didn’t expect that. Otherwise, it seems like a pretty solid game to kill some time. You can watch my video below to see what it plays like.

Knotwords

Last week, Knotwords released with only a few days left to complete all sixty monthly puzzles. I was determined, though, and I got it done just in time. I’ve since also completed the standard May puzzles, am close to completing the tricky ones, and I’ve been playing the daily puzzles every morning after Wordle. It really is a great game and I highly recommend it, even if you just play the free standard puzzles. I’m also posting the solutions to the monthly puzzles here if you need help.

Genshin Impact

And last, I spent way too much time in Spiral Abyss this week. I was determined to get 36 stars since I had 35. But I really started to question my life choices a couple of hours in. I managed to pull it off, though, for only the second time ever. So it felt good. Other than that, not much is happening in Genshin Impact at the moment. They officially pushed off the 2.7 update due to the lockdown in Shanghai. So there are only some light events going on at the moment while we wait to hear when 2.6 will actually end. I don’t mind so much, as it gives me a chance to save for the characters I want and also play other games.

And that’s everything I’ve been playing this week. I also binged the second season of Undone since it was hard to stop once I started. I had my doubts about it but they blew it out of the water. It’s just absolute perfection. I don’t know if a third season is planned, but I completely trust the writers to do it right if it does happen. I’m also still watching Suits, but the final season is absolutely ridiculous and I’m only really watching it at this point for closure. Anyway, let me know in the comments section which games you’re enjoying and I’ll see you back here next time for more of My Week Unwrapped!