So Apple Arcade has been out for a while now and I’m wondering what everyone’s thoughts are so far. What have you been playing and what else would you recommend from Apple Arcade? Any games you perhaps didn’t like or having issues with? Let’s talk about it!
The game I’ve been hooked on the most is Chu Chu Rocket Universe. What a great little puzzle game! It reminds me a bit of Lemmings with a dash of Super Mario Galaxy. You control little Chu Chu’s back to their spaceship using directional arrows you place on the floor tiles. I’m on the 3rd constellation and things are starting to get a bit tricky.
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Also I’ve been loving Assemble With Care, a short narrative game where you play as a repairwoman. The actual gameplay is a bit short, you only fix one item per chapter, but the story and characters are very charming! I’m about an hour in and halfway done with the game so it’s fairly short, but it’s just very relaxing and calming to play.
What have you been playing on Apple Arcade?
Answers from Reddit.
Pretty much Oceanhorn 2. Really impressed. My biggest issue so far is that these generally have quite a bit of opening story bits. Not necessarily a complaint, but I can’t sit through opening stories of 20+ games in a weekend and still care about them all.
I’ve been playing a fair bit of Oceanhorn 2. For a phone game, it’s impressive. As a game, it’s horrible.
For the record, I am playing this game with a DualShock 4 on my TV using the HDMI adapter.
It could have been really, really good. With another year or so of polish and a better writer. And maybe if it told you how to play the game? There are absolutely no tutorials beyond a few signs stating the most obvious stuff, no button layout in the menu and no way of knowing what to press beyond randomly pressing buttons and seeing what they do.
I was an hour into the game before I found out there was a radial menu where you could select stuff.
And this is not just me being daft. Let me give an example.
You have a gun in this game. You use it to shoot stuff. You get upgrades for it so it shoots different elements. So you can shoot fire into a brazier to open a door, for example. You have to find ammo for the different elements, which you can find in tufts of grass and stuff like that.
At one point you get a lightning upgrade for the gun, and right next to it is a door with 3 lightning rods in front of it. And a poster with 3 lightning rods on it and a lightning bolt going from one rod to another.
They only give you one lightning bullet, so you shoot one of the lightning rods. Nothing happens.
Okay, you run around and slash some grass and a minute later you have another bullet, so you shoot the second rod. Nothing happens.
A minute and some conspicuously respawning tufts of grass later, you finally get to shoot the third rod. And nothing happens.
One minute later. You try the first one again. Nothing.
You notice that the rod you shoot first lights up yellow when you aim at it. Aha! Maybe you have to shoot the bullet so it hits both rods! A long minute later and finally, a big lightning bolt connects between the two rods you shot past.
And tadaaaah! Nothing happens.
In the meantime, your two escort companions, which I really hope won’t stick around for the entire game, just stood around staring blankly, offering no help or quippy voice line hints. They even lacked the self awareness to move away from a ticking bomb I placed in frustration, “killing” them both.
So how did I overcome this puzzle? Well, you apparently had to do something that was extremely counterintuitive and was the exact opposite of what you had been doing with the same gun all along.
I had been tapping the trigger, like you do with guns and like I had done for the past 3-4 hours or so. For this one, you had to hold it in. Like, while the bullet traveled in the same fashion as all the other bullets had, you had to hold the button down until the bullet hit the rod (which took around two seconds), and then you had to move the reticule, which now had a lightning bolt attached to it, over to the second rod, and then the third. But not too far away! Because then it just disappeared and you got to go slash tufts of grass again for the umpteenth time.
I can’t remember the last time I was this frustrated with a game.
This does not seem like a finished product to me.
What The Golf is surprisingly good. I figured it would just be a high quality mini golf game. But it’s so so much more. As I advance in the game, the levels are introducing mechanics from other games and it’s wild. Like the Superhot section, here I am playing mini golf while slowmo sniping baddies on top of a skyscraper. The Portal levels were fun too. This game is wild and if you at all like mini golf mini games, give it a shot.
Grindstone!
I’ve tried a few games that didn’t catch me because they aren’t really what I like in mobile gaming. Grindstone, though, that shit is awesome. I like light puzzle games like that one, and added goofy gore is great. I’m still going through a bunch of games though. I’m not going to keep Arcade just for Grindstone but if there are a few games that I’ll play a lot over time, I’ll actually keep this, which I was not expecting.
Cardpocalypse, Sneaky Sasquatch, Skate City have all been great.
Possessions was nice and relaxing. Short, but the story intrigued me for sure. And I like the way it is told through the still frames.
My wife is already obsessed with What The Golf haha.
Ocean horn 2, Bleak Sword, Various Daylife.
I’ve played Sayonara Wild Hearts, What the Golf?, and Bleak Sword. They are all fantastic so far. It didn’t take very long to ply through all of Wild Hearts, but man is it so good! Honestly smiling throughout the whole game.
Since I’ve beaten that, I moved on to Bleak Sword. It’s been a lot of fun, I just beat the boss of the second world (island, level?)
What the golf is just fun. Have spend just under 2 hours total, as it actually has a clock. Usually playing that one is shorter bursts, but it’s been great. A lot of variety in the levels and packed with fun surprises/cameos.
I downloaded a bunch, but I mainly played Cat Quest 2 and Various Daylife. CQ2 was super fun, and I ended up just finishing the whole thing over the weekend, which is a rare occurrence for me these days. I’m still trying to get the hang of VD, but I like it so far. I like the unique leveling system, and I’m always a fan of turn based battles.
