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…
Barcode Kingdom
We never really know what sort of thing will capture our attention for Game of the Week. Maybe a game has particularly unique visuals, or has a different spin on a tried and true gameplay formula. Or maybe it’s just the game we found to be most fun out of everything released during the week. In the case of this week’s choice, Barcode Kingdom ($0.99), it was due to its ability to scan barcodes near and far in order to build up a party of warriors and a prosperous kingdom.
Now, I’ll be the first to admit that the barcode scanning is as gimmicky as gimmicks can get, and the actual gameplay surrounding it isn’t anything especially noteworthy. Heck, barcode scanning isn’t even a new gimmick–I had games as a child that did the same thing–and it isn’t even the first iOS game to utilize such a mechanic. Still, there’s something undeniably satisfying about scanning a new barcode and seeing what results from it, and what’s really fascinating to me is how much our community has become involved in Barcode Kingdom.
The thread in our forums has exploded with activity with people searching out codes that result in the rarest of characters, then sharing them with everyone else. They’ve even taken to barcode-generating websites that allow you to type in various number combinations and generate a unique barcode from them, so you don’t even have to run around your house finding every shampoo bottle and DVD case you can find just to scan its code. However, that’s what I’ve been doing most of the day, and I think it’s more fun doing it the hard way and searching out real barcodes on the junk lying around my house.
Either way you go about it, though, Barcode Kingdom is an interesting little game, and for a buck it’s worth checking out for yourself if the basic concept sounds neat to you. Hey, maybe there’s an ultra-rare archer living in your refrigerator and you didn’t even know it.
