My Week Unwrapped: October 21, 2022 – Lucy Dreaming, Scriptic, Haccer, Gigapocalypse, EverCrawl, Sigma Theory and More

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’ve cut back on Genshin Impact because I’m almost done exploring the Sumeru desert. That left me with a lot more time to play other games, and some of them are quite impressive. Lucy Dreaming was the biggest surprise for me, but it’s not the only one worth checking out. There’s plenty to discuss, so let’s dive in.

Lucy Dreaming

I didn’t really know what to expect from Lucy Dreaming and — to be honest — seeing the old-school user interface had me a bit worried at first. But it quickly won me over with its charm, humor and excellent voice acting. You play as Lucy, who’s been having a the same reoccurring nightmare every night. To try and stop it, you need to fill a box with some of her favorite things, including a stuffed animal — that seems to have gone missing. I played about 40 minutes before getting stuck and taking a break. But I love how many details they’ve stuffed into this game. Every item you examine has its own description, even if it’s not used for anything — and there are a lot of them! As I mentioned, I’m not sure at the moment how to make progress and I’m trying to avoid cheating. So bear with me. But I’m definitely going to stick with this one and would recommend it to any point-and-click adventure fans from what I’ve played so far. I also started a walkthrough guide if anyone needs help.

Scriptic: Crime Stories

A while back, I played the “found phone” murder mystery game, Dead Man’s Phone. Since then, the developers had been working on a rebrand and also a sequel. This week, they finally rereleased the app as Scriptic. You can still access any episodes of Dead Man’s Phone you previously bought, but now you also have access to the second season called Unmasked. It’s a story about an AllMyFans influencer, aka a sex worker, who’s found dead in the forest with her head missing. Since she always wore a mask and used a stage name, no one knows her true identity. So your goal in the game is to both uncover her identity and also find the killer. I only played through the first episode so far, but once again I’m impressed with the writing in this series. I do wish the videos were better quality and that there was more voice acting. But otherwise it’s well done and I look forward to playing more of it. You can try the first episode yourself for free, along with a short separate season where you play as a 999 dispatcher.

Haccer

One of my favorite kinds of games to play on my iPhone is a “pure” high score chaser that doesn’t involve any sort of grind. I generally prefer the more relaxed, turn-based ones, but sometimes a hectic one can hook me. Haccer is somewhere in between, as you do need to move fairly quickly, but the speed feels reasonable — at least so far. The idea is to dig down as far as you can, setting off bomb chains to increase your score. But you need to be careful not to get hit by any of those bombs or it’s game over. I still need lots of practice, but I’m enjoying it a lot. It helps that it’s easy to jump right back in for a new game when you die, and there’s nothing standing in your way besides your own skill and strategy. The only thing I’m not a fan of I the bar that shrinks if you stay out for too long. It’s at the top of the screen and I’m not even paying attention to it at all, but I’m pretty sure that’s what killed me a few times when I was out of reach of any bombs. Hopefully I just need to get used to moving nonstop, because I don’t think I’m able to grow another set of eyes to watch that timer. If you’re unsure whether you’d like the game, I recommend watching some of my gameplay video below.

Gigapocalypse

Speaking of grinding…. Now we get into a couple of games that I would enjoy a whole lot more without the grind. Gigapocalypse has you controlling a giant kaiju and destroying cities as you stomp through them. It’s a fun idea and it works well on mobile since the monster moves on his own. Most of the time, you’re just tapping on the spot where you want to direct your attacks or you’re hitting your skill buttons. But your kaiju starts off very weak and there are a ton of upgrades to buy to make him stronger. Yes, it’s a premium game so it’s all earned through play, not IAPs. But it still feels bad to make such slow progress. It’s hard to tell how powerful my kaiju is supposed to be in order to complete an area, whether it’s a skill issue or a lack of power. After about an hour of this cycle of playing a bit, upgrading a bit, playing a bit, upgrading a bit, I felt I had my fill. It was just too much grinding for me. If you don’t mind that, by all means give it a shot. But I recommend watching some of my gameplay video first.

EverCrawl – Pixelart Roguelite

EverCrawl is another game I would like a lot more without the slow and seemingly endless grind. It’s a turn-based roguelite in which you try to get deeper and deeper into the dungeon each time. You earn points that unlock new items and characters, and you earn coins that can be used to upgrade those items and characters. The problem is, there’s a lot of RNG that can bring an early game to a quick end. For instance, it’s hard to avoid skeletons using the starter class, the Fighter. They move one tile over whenever you move — unless they’re already near you. Then they stay put so you can’t avoid them. This on its own wouldn’t be so bad, since killing enemies gives you more points. But you never know how well a battle will go, and too often I’ve had all my attacks miss while the skeleton just destroys me. I’m sure things will be easier with upgraded heroes, but making the same progress over and over just to earn a bit towards more upgrades and characters feels bad to me. I doubt I’ll invest more time into this game, as much as I like the core idea.

Sigma Theory

I’m always grateful when existing games get ported over to mobile, since it’s never a given. That said, not every game is going to be my jam. I was curious about Sigma Theory and gave it a try, but it bugged out during the tutorial and I had to kill the app to get it working again. At that point, I realized I didn’t really know what I was doing and wasn’t invested enough in figuring it out. I’m sure there’s an audience out there for this game but it’s not me.

Genshin Impact

And last, I’ve made more progress through the Sumeru desert in Genshin Impact. I mostly just have to clean up and find all the little things I missed on my first time through it all. Aside from that, I tried out Nilou, and she seems fun but I’m currently saving for other characters. I also finished the Wind Chaser event and started the Star-Seeker’s Sojourn event, which I’m enjoying more. Other than that, I’m just saving up for the characters I want in version 3.2.

And that’s everything I’ve been up to this week. I also finished The Midnight Club and liked it a lot more than I expected to. It ended on a cliffhanger, though, without any guarantee of a second season. I then started The Watcher, which is pretty silly but somehow I can’t stop watching. 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.

This Post Has 2 Comments

  1. Sara

    Don’t buy Lucy Dreaming (for $16.99!) until you try the free Prequel. I decided to download the Prequel first to see if I liked it enough to pay 17 bucks. If you like walking around touching and examining crap in a house, then this is your game. But if you have better uses for your gaming time, then don’t bother, It’s underwhelming and not worth the money in my opinion.

    1. Sarah

      That’s because you’re American and, due to the fact it’s a British game, about 95% of the gags are going to go right over your head. That’s why, I imagine, you’re not getting on with it. I really, really, enjoyed it, worth every British penny, in my opinion. That’s the problem, I find, with many septics; they’re too arrogant to imagine that there’s any country outside of the contiguous 48.

      I’m also going to hazard a guess that you’re not old enough to remember the very first point ‘n’ clicks in the early ’90s, that’s what it was based on (although, considering that the style was more Sierra than LucasArts, I was surprised there were no references to the very earliest Sierra games).

      Lisa is far more outward-looking, so I’m sure she’ll get on with it far better; of course if you don’t understand British culture, then the jokes are going to fall flat.

Leave a Reply to Sarah Cancel reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.