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…
Antihero
It’s been slim pickings with new releases these past couple weeks as the iTunes store slowly comes out of its holiday break, but that hasn’t had an impact on what we felt was the most solid release this week in Antihero ($4.99) from Versus Evil and designer Tim Conkling. The premise to Antihero is super cool. You’re running a guild in Victorian-era England where you need to hire some of the most dastardly people around to do your evil bidding in an effort to take over the city. Here’s an excerpt from our review earlier this week:
“In Antihero, you run a thieves guild as you attempt to gain enough victory points to defeat either the AI or a human opponent. When I started playing the first scenario of the Campaign, I thought that the game would be all about overpowering your opponent by controlling enough territory and killing enough people. I was quickly surprised by the intricacies of the game mechanics and the depth and variations the developers have managed to weave into this digital board game.
You start the game with a Master Thief, and you gradually use that character to burgle for gold and scout the map. Using the Master Thief’s abilities, you begin to build your economy, which will get you gold and lanterns each turn. The gold can be used to hire new gang members (urchins, thugs, Saboteurs, etc) while the lanterns are used to research various upgrades, which include things like giving your Master Thief an extra turn, getting more gold per house you burgle, and many more.
If you’ve been looking for a fun but challenging digital board game with a lot of depth and a great visual style, Antihero is the game for you. There’s plenty of content to play through and clever strategies to figure out, and all of that is dressed in a lovely art style. Now go take out all those street urchins and take over the town; just know that you’re in for a challenge and will have to plan carefully and execute at just the right time."
