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…
Proto Raider
You know, there were so darn many good games released this week, even a few heavy-hitter stragglers, but Puzzle Lab’s Proto Raider ($2.99) is just so quirky and so cool it totally won our hearts for Game of the Week. Proto Raider is a “designed auto-runner" (I think I just made that term up), meaning it’s an auto-running platformer but it’s not endless and it’s not randomly generated. Your goal is to make it through around 60 pre-designed puzzle-like levels with only one action available to you: tap to jump.
Thankfully, even though you technically only have one action at your disposal, the game gets more complex as it progresses. Jumping at the right time and onto the right object causes your little character to perform various actions, like climbing a ladder or donning a scuba pack that let’s you traverse underwater areas. It’s so freaking cool, and also quite challenging. Actually it’s really challenging, and requires precision moves and quick thinking, and more than likely most of the levels will take you a few tries before you deduce what the solution is to getting to the goal.
By far, though, the thing that sticks out the most about Proto Raider is its art style. If you don’t like pixel art, well, then your mind might explode at the ASCII glory of the visuals in this game. Yes, everything is made up of ASCII characters, which basically amounts to numbers, the letters of the alphabet, and a few basic symbols like “@" or “&". This is what games looked like before there were, um, graphics and stuff.
Puzzle Labs has ingeniuously used the available ASCII characters to create the illusion of flickering candles, moving water, even your character’s running movement. It’s so freaking clever and looks so neat in motion. It just brings a huge smile to my face. As an added bonus, you can pick from several options that change up the visuals just slightly, and there’s even a monochromatic mode which makes everything green and reminds me of the computer my parents had in our garage office when I was like 8 years old. Nostalgia!
Don’t misunderstand me though, Proto Raider is more than just a neat art style. It’s a genuinely challenging and well-designed puzzle platformer. If you liked games like Rayman Jungle Run, Wind-Up Knight, or Run Roo Run, then you’ll dig Proto Raider as well. Pretty much everyone in our forums has been impressed with it too, so for a couple of bucks I’d suggest giving it a look if you’re into the non-endless-not-randomly-generated-auto-runner-puzzle-platformer genre.
