What? Oh, is it 2017 already? I get the impression that the Pocket Tactics offices weren’t the only ones still missing all their lampshades a week after New Year’s, as some of this week’s releases seem to be missing something. Thankfully, there are some real winners on this week’s slate, including Don’t Starve: Shipwrecked and Milkmaid of the Milky Way.
Don’t Starve: Shipwrecked
Don’t Starve: Shipwrecked is similar to the original Don’t Starve, only much better. There are two reasons for this clear superiority: one, tentacled sea monsters, and two, you can play as Wickerbottom the Librarian without having to unlock anything. I rest my case. If you’ve been living under a 14.4 baud modem, Don’t Starve is a realtime survival crafting __game with an unhealthy obsession with Johnny Depp circa Sleepy Hollow. Shipwrecked adds pirate hats, palm trees, and death by drowning. If you’re new here, listen to the game’s title and remember that nights are dangerous with a light source and deadly without.
Don’t Starve: Shipwrecked will not be voted off the island on iOS.
Five Nights at Freddie’s: Sister Location
You know what you’re in for here. Screaming in terror, throwing your phone, and nightmares about “naked” animatronics. Oh, and the writing’s witty. Sister Location does mix things up considerably, as you’ll be crawling through maintenance shafts, working with a disturbingly broken maintenance bot, replacing blown fuses, and giving the animatronics high-voltage shocks if they’re not compliant. At least this time you’ll feel like you deserve it when they murder you..
You know what you’re in for, but knowing won’t save you on iOS or Android.
Avignon: A Clash of Popes
Ever fancied yourself Pope, or perhaps an Antipope? Avignon: A Clash of Popes is about a fascinating moment in European religious history when the same group of Cardinals annointed two Popes, one in Rome, and then a second in Avignon, France, when the first one was unsatisfactory. You won’t find that backstory in the game, though, or any other explanation whatsoever. There’s no tutorial, no tooltips, no manual, not even a link to instructions online. Avignon is an interesting, quick-playing, two-player card game, but I had to go to BoardGameGeek to get a clue what I was supposed to do. The game’s only a buck, with another dollar for an expansion and custom games, but with no instructions, a weak AI, and only hotseat multiplayer, I can’t recommend it.
The Pope abides on iOS and and Android.
PathFinder: Destination
No, this isn’t Paizo’s GOTY-winning __game about killing monsters and taking their stuff, it’s a game about actually finding a path for a puzzle-impaired adventurer in a glitchy videogame. You swap back and forth between the fantasy game world and its digital underside. Just stay out of the hero’s way: Player One is apparently the kind of jerk who cuts down neutral NPCs without a second thought. Pathfinder is an interesting concept with rough edges that are exacerbated by unclear tutorial images and the fact that the title is the only English word in the game. Missing or insufficient instructions seem to be a theme this week.
If you’re up for roughing it, you can be a PathFinder on iOS.
Milkmaid of the Milky Way
Milkmaid of the Milky Way is a Lucasarts-inspired adventure about a milkmaid on an isolated Norwegian farm and her Close Encounters of the Third Kind moment. The entire game was written in couplet rhyme and it has lonely nordic landscapes, some of the best pixel animations I’ve even seen, northern lights, and a recipe for cheese: it is perfect. Overwhelmingly recommended for fans of the Tiffany Aching books, adventure games, and fjords.
Lykke is a sweet cow, but she’s not going to milk herself on iOS.
Cluckles’ Adventure
“Precision platformer” isn’t on the Pocket Tactics Standards Weights and Measures List of Genres We Like, but Cluckles is right up there with Camilla from The Muppet Show on my list of all-time favorite fictional hens. Cluckles’ Adventure is a remarkably well-designed platformer, with responsive, phone-friendly controls, strong, bite-size level design, cute sprite art, and the best excuse for a double-jump ever: it’s Cluckles trying to fly.
Cluckles’ Adventure is ad-supported with a lone $2 IAP to remove the ads and it’s clucking your way on iOS and Android.
Mega Man Mobile (1-6)
Everyone who ever so much as picked up an original NES controller had reason to be excited about Capcom’s official port of the first six Mega Man games. That’s a lot of people who now have cause to be deeply disappointed, as this port plays like Capcom licensed the lowest-rated NES emulator on Cydia and threw the games up on the app store without doing any testing at all. Put it this way: when I tried a NES emulator on my 100 mhz Pentium with only 16 MB of RAM (that’s 0.016 gigabytes, kiddos) 20 years ago, the results were better than this.
These games are $2 each on iOS or Android, which is about $3 too much, if you ask me.
Please Don’t Touch Anything 3D was also released this week, presumably so the brilliant, beautiful 2D design of the original could be ruined by awkward camera angles and the distinct impression that looming nuclear holocaust isn’t a problem because some freaky living doll is going to eat my eyes first. Sorry, I’m still not fully recovered from Sister Location. Anyway, I didn’t make time to play this remake, but apparently there are some new puzzles and endings, so fans of the original have a real incentive to give the 3D experience a chance. Is a VR edition next?
What have you been playing this past week? Anything you want us to take a look at specifically? Let us know in the comments below!
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