Hi everyone, and welcome back to My Week Unwrapped, where I discuss all the games I’ve been playing over the last seven days. Most of my week was spent with games I’d already started, including Hero Emblems II — despite my criticisms of it. But we also finally got Dicey Dungeons on mobile, including all the new content that was added on top of the main game. All things considered, it’s been a pretty eventful week for iOS games, so let’s get to it.

Dicey Dungeons

Dicey Dungeons first released on PC in 2019 and it always looked like the perfect mobile game, so it’s unfortunate that it took so long to get ported over. But I’m so glad and grateful that I can finally play it on my iPad. It’s a roguelike in which you make your way through a dungeon, collecting different skills and using them to battle enemies as you make your way to the final boss. The catch is that all your moves are reliant on dice rolls. With the basic class, the Warrior, all your moves depend on dice rolls and the strategy comes in the form of choosing your skills, what to upgrade, and which ones to use in battle. But more advanced classes have trickier move sets. The Thief steals a skill from his opponent each round. The Inventor breaks down her skills into parts she can use, and the Witch has to conjure spells from her spell book in order to use them. So far, I was able to beat the first episode with all the characters except the Witch. It was a close call with the Inventor, but I narrowly escaped death. With the Witch, I was struggling the whole time and even had to skip enemies to stay alive. But I’m going to keep trying. I’m also looking forward to trying more episodes, as well as the Halloween and Reunion DLCs. To be honest, getting so much content all at once is a little overwhelming, so I’m trying to just focus on the main campaign right now and get more acquainted with each character. I love everything about the game, though. It’s got a great art style, tons of humor, a killer soundtrack, and it’s super easy to dive right into. If you’re a roguelike fan, you should definitely play it. My only complaint is that there’s no iCloud sync, so I have my progress on my iPad and can’t take it with me on my iPhone. Other than that, it’s a great game and a great port.

Jade Order

Jade Order initially released on Nintendo Switch a couple of months back and just made its way over to mobile this week. It’s similar to the GO games, especially Deus Ex GO, so it’s a natural fit for the platform. I think I’m a bit burnt out on these kinds of games, though. There’s nothing wrong with them, but it’s hard to say something new at this point. The mechanics feel similar — you move node by node and enemies move at the same time. There are three goals for each level. The first is to wipe out a certain number of enemies and get to the exit in. For the second, you have to complete it in a certain number of moves. And for the third, the move count doesn’t matter, but you need to collect a specific item before going to the exit. These can be done separately, and usually you’re forced to because the item requires more moves than simply getting to the exit. My main issue with the game, though, is that it feels very slow. Every time I try to move there seems to be a small delay and I end up having to tap a node multiple times. Aside from that, I tend to find move counters on puzzle games to silly, especially when it means counting 25 moves. I do appreciate the undo button, though. I wanted one for Deus Ex GO but they made them into a consumable you can buy with real cash. Here there’s no catch and you can even undo a death and pick up where you left off. The game looks great, too. I think if the pacing could be improved I’d be more likely to stick with it longer. As is, I recommend watching some of my gameplay video before before making a decision.

Chefy-Chef

Platformers are not my forte, so I knew going in that it might not go so well with Chefy-Chef. And I was not wrong. I managed just fine when there were only spikes to avoid, but the very first enemies introduced in the game completely broke me. Normally I can handle jumping over an enemy here and there. But what tripped me up was that these were frogs and they also jumped. It made it a lot harder to avoid them. I was hoping landing on their heads would take them out, but nope! The level that introduces them is also fairly large compared to the previous ones and I decided I just didn’t have the patience for it. If you like platformers more than I do, though, check out my video to see what it’s like and maybe it’ll be more your speed.

Incoherence

Glitch Games’ released Incoherence last week and I started my walkthrough guide then. I’ve since made videos for all four chapters and also explained on my site how to complete the final puzzle in each chapter. It’s not a long game, but I really enjoyed it and am glad to see the developers thinking outside the box all these years later.

Hero Emblems II

I was very frustrated with Hero Emblems II last week, as the random battles and other time-consuming things started to wear me down. I took a few days off from it and now I’m playing again. I’m still finding those things annoying, but now that I have an airship to use to explore, I’m enjoying it again. I’ll probably see it through the end now that I’ve gotten this far and then give my final impressions. Again, you can see all my gameplay videos here.

The Sea of Death

I started playing The Sea of Death last week and found it very intriguing. I continued playing and still like it, but I’m a bit turned off by some of the puzzles. They weren’t from super easy to overly obtuse. I ended up using hints and for one of them that just meant getting the answer. For the other, I couldn’t figure it out even with a hint, so I just cheated and copied the answer… again. I’ll probably continue with it, but I hope that’s not how the puzzles will be going forward.

Genshin Impact

And last, I continued with Genshin Impact. Since 2.8 is coming in a few days, I wanted to get Kuki Shinobu’s hangouts out of the way. I also finished the toy robot event, which was underwhelming. I’m looking forward to the summer islands event so I can do some proper exploring and puzzle solving.

And that’s everything I’ve been up to this week. I also finished all three seasons of Barry and got all caught up on The Boys. I might start an Apple TV+ subscription for Severance, as the first episode got my attention. 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!