The idea behind the TouchArcade Game of the Week is that every Friday afternoon we post the one game that came out this week that we think is worth giving a special nod to. Now, before anyone goes over-thinking this, it doesn’t necessarily mean our Game of the Week pick is the highest scoring game in a review, the game with the best graphics, or really any other quantifiable “best" thing. Instead, it’s more just us picking out the single game out of the week’s releases that we think is the most noteworthy, surprising, interesting, or really any other hard to describe quality that makes it worth having if you were just going to pick up one.
These picks might be controversial, and that’s OK. If you disagree with what we’ve chosen, let’s try to use the comments of these articles to have conversations about what game is your game of the week and why.
Without further ado…
Skulls of the Shogun
As we’ve mentioned a few times this week, it’s been kind of a weird week of new releases. Most everything that would have typically come out on a Wednesday night like normal actually came out on Tuesday night, most likely in an effort to avoid the craziness of Thanksgiving on Thursday. Then, a bunch of other new games popped up after the initial batch on Tuesday, and we rounded up as many of those as we could in a normal “Out Now" post on Wednesday. With everything being kind of all over the place this week, it would be totally understandable if the release of Skulls of the Shogun (Free) might have slipped past you. However, don’t let this one fly under your radar, as it’s an absolutely phenomenal turn-based strategy game that deserves your attention.
Skulls of the Shogun originally launched early this year on Xbox Live Arcade, Windows, and Windows Phone devices. I actually wasn’t previously familiar with the game, and had no idea it was heading to iOS until it actually showed up in the App Store. Let’s just say this has been one of the most pleasant surprises I’ve had with an iOS release. I don’t tend to love a lot of strategy titles, especially the really hardcore and involved ones, but Skulls of the Shogun is inspired by titles like Advance Wars and has that same approachable feel of that series. That’s not to say it’s dumbed-down or anything, and it’s definitely not a cakewalk, but after the initial set of missions in Skulls of the Shogun I felt completely hooked as it does a great job at slowly introducing you to its mechanics.
In fact, one of the things I like most about Skulls of the Shogun is the variety in its systems. There’s a lot of different ways you can approach each battle, whether you’re upgrading an individual unit into a superpower by scarfing down your dead enemies’ skulls, using your ranged units to battle from afar, or creating a strong defense by positioning your units closely together and creating a spirit wall. Best of all is that each of the game’s levels have specific achievements to earn by completing certain objectives, so even though I’m fairly early on in the game I’m already looking forward to going back to previously beat levels and trying to win using different strategies that will net me those achievements.
Skulls of the Shogun is just a top-notch effort all around, and besides its great strategy elements, it’s also stuffed with fantastic production values which include its Samurai theme and tons of humor spread throughout. I’ll tell you, I definitely didn’t expect to be laughing out loud at Skulls of the Shogun when I initially downloaded it, but it’s been a common occurrence. If you enjoy strategy games then I think you’ll be more than satisfied with Skulls of the Shogun, and people in our forums seem to be loving it a lot. But even if you aren’t a big strategy gamer, it seems like a great title for the more “casual" strategy fans like myself, so definitely make sure it’s one of this week’s new releases that’s on your radar to check out.
