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…
Get Me Outta Here
This is going to be a bit tricky because, well, everything I wanted to highlight about Rossman Bros. and Crescent Moon’s Get Me Outta Here ($2.99) for our Game of the Week was pretty well covered by Carter in his review earlier today. Hmph. So definitely go give that review a read because I think it really cuts to the heart of why I love this game so much, and I also talk about many of those things on our podcast this week, but for the purposes of this post let me try to give you the tl;dr version.
Get Me Outta Here is an arena-style platform shooter. A normal round is 2.5 minutes, and you’ll spend that first minute blasting away at various bad guys who appear and are either stationary and aiming their weapons at you wherever you go or are following you around the arena in some fashion. After that minute passes a boss strolls in, and you have the remaining 1.5 minutes to take it down. If you’re successful, you’ll get another 2.5 minutes added on to whatever time you had remaining and the next round will start, with a new batch of more difficult enemies and a new boss to fight. Rinse and repeat until you win the game!
Aside from the timer-based round system, which I think is very novel, it’s pretty standard arena shooter stuff. What makes Get Me Outta Here stand out from the pack–and it might not be apparent in the first few plays–is the nuance of the scoring mechanics. Before starting a game you have the option to choose various modifiers. You can choose to take less damage, have lower boss health, or have fewer enemies spawn all of which makes getting through the game much easier but at the expense of earning less points than you normally would. Or you can choose to increase all of those things in order to score even more points than you would on the default settings. This is a nice way to cater to a wide audience without the typical, boring difficulty options.
Even more interesting is the combo system, which earns you more and more points by killing enemies in quick succession. It’s not unlike combo systems in many other games, but it is a perfect fit here. Maintaining your combo for as long as possible is the underlying meta game of Get Me Outta Here. It gets to the point of if you screw up and break your combo chain, well, you might as well have just been killed instead. It’s completely addicting trying to keep that combo going and, coupled with the modifier options mentioned above, really shooting for that “perfect" run and ultimate score.
This is all without even diving into the various weapons and special abilities in the game, which similarly offer you various types of strategies to maximize your play. And that’s what it boils down to for me. Get Met Outta Here is a game based heavily on strategy and straight up skill, and it’s broken into nice sized chunks that are perfect for mobile play. Add to that the humorous story, visuals, sound effects (and voice acting!) and you can feel the love just oozing out. Not in a gross way, but like, in an endearing way. And endearing ooze, if you will. It’s also free with ads and a couple of one-time IAP premium unlock options so there’s no reason not to be checking out Get Me Outta Here right this very minute.
