Hi everyone! I know I’m a day late again with My Week Unwrapped, but I came down with a nasty cold yesterday and went to sleep early to try and get rid of it. I’m still under the weather today, but alert enough (I think!) to discuss all the games I played over the last week. So let’s not waste any more time and jump right into it!
Dissembler
I had Dissembler several weeks ahead of release, and sometimes in those situations, I’m no longer that excited by the time the game gets in everyone else’s hands. But the daily puzzles have kept me coming back every morning, some of them taking me almost the entire day to solve. This is definitely one of my favorite puzzle games, as it’s the full package — tricky, satisfying, one-handed play, and it’s user-friendly. Not only is there an unlimited undo button, but you can also unlock all levels from the beginning so you don’t have to be stuck on a single one. I gushed more about it in my review here, so I’ll just let you read that. And if you get hopelessly stuck on any of it, you can try my walkthrough guide here.
AltoΓÇÖs Odyssey
I also had Alto’s Odyssey, the sandy sequel to Snowman’s Alto’s Adventure, a little ahead of release, and have been having a blast with it. While the main difference is you’re sandboarding through desert environments instead of snowboarding through, well, snow, there’s also new mechanics like wallriding and new tricks to chain together, such as balloon bounces and tornado flips. There’s also three different areas to travel through to keep things interesting. I enjoyed it more than the original, but still had some complaints. You can read my full review here and my walkthrough guide here. I’ve since unlocked the final character and got a new high score over 200,000, which you can see in the video below. If you have any interest in the game, I think it’s worth trying it.
[ c u b e u s ]
[ c u b e u s ] has already been out for a little while, but it missed my radar until this past week. I liked the look of it and it seemed like an interesting puzzler, so I wanted to give it a try. I only played a few levels, as I’m currently hopelessly stuck. I’m not sure what I’m missing. But part of the problem is that the board — even when switched to top-down view — is a bit too wide for my iPad and some things are cut off and out of my view. The tiles also tend to blend in a bit too much with the background. But it has some impressive graphics and a chill soundtrack, as well as interesting mechanics. I just wish it didn’t feel like I was guessing so often about what’s around me. I’m still going to try and give it more time, but you can watch my video below to see if it’s something you’d like.
Roll For It!
Tsuro was one of my favorite games of 2016, so of course I wouldn’t expect any less quality from Thunderbox with their digital adaptation of the board game Roll For It! With 3D dice and the same Facebook and Gamecenter integration we’re used to, it feels like a quality game. So far, I’ve only completed games against the AI and am in middle of two games against friends. I think, like Tsuro, it’s best played against other humans, but it’s nice to have those AIs when that’s not a possibility. That said, the AI can be a bit too dumb sometimes, as you can see in the video below. In the game, you roll dice and need to pick out from them the ones you see on cards in front of you. If you place down all the dice shown on the card before your opponent does, you get the point value of the card. Whoever gets 40 points first wins. So, my AI opponent at one point rolled three sixes but didn’t use them to get the card that needed three sixes. So it didn’t feel like I was playing against a proper opponent. Apparently, there are harder AIs to unlock, so hopefully those won’t do silly stuff like that. Anyway, you can watch my gameplay video below to see it in action.
PAPER Anne
I really wanted to like PAPER Ann. It has some great ideas with interesting mechanics. But I’ve only completed three levels and feel like I’ve spent too much time battling the controls and trying to avoid hitting game-breaking bugs. You can read more about it in my review here, but I don’t recommend this to anyone in its current state unless you have a lot of patience.
Rogue Hearts
I almost didn’t buy Rogue Hearts because I saw it has in-app purchases for in-game currency and I try to avoid those because they usually just annoy me. But I was curious about it and finally caved, since it only costs $0.99. I haven’t spent much time with it yet, but am enjoying it so far. I especially like how I can break just about everything in the environment to loot gold and items. Gems are very scarce, though, at least early on, so I hope that doesn’t become an issue later. For now I’m going to stick with it, though.
Silent Streets: Mockingbird
Silent Streets: Mockingbird is releasing on March 1st. It’s a premium-priced sequel to the original game that was free to play. I tried that one but got turned off by all the different roadblocks and IAPs, so I’m glad this one doesn’t have any of that. I’m still not sold on the need for AR, as I don’t enjoy walking around my messy living room to play a game. But I’m going to spend more time with it and see where the story takes me. You can watch some gameplay video below to decide if you want to pre-order it now.
And that’s everything I’ve been up to this past week! Let me know if you decide to pick any of these games up. I’d love to know what others think! For now, I’m going back to bed to nurse this cold. But I’ll see you back here next week with more of My Week Unwrapped!
