It’s raining Mikeys, hallelujah it’s raining Mikeys! It was just two short days ago that fan-favorite platformer Mikey Shorts was resurrected and released as part of GameClub’s subscription gaming service. That marked one of the most TouchArcade-y games to become part of GameClub to date, seeing as how the people who created it initially met on our forums and bonded over their love of Hook Champ before deciding to make a speedrunning game of their own. After the tremendous success of Mikey Shorts back in 2012, the developer Beavertap Games went to work on a sequel, and this time around they wanted to implement something that paid homage to their Hook Champ inspirations: A grappling hook mechanic. And thus Mikey Hooks was born in the summer of 2013.

Needless to say, Mikey Hooks offered another hefty dose of expertly-designed levels and healthy speedrunning competition. Like Mikey Shorts before it though, Mikey Hooks was able to cater to a wide audience as the more casual players could enjoy simply playing through the game at their own pace while the more hardcore among us could obsess over speedrunning. We gave Mikey Hooks 5 stars in our original review and chose it as our Game of the Week when it released. Basically it’s everything we loved about the first Mikey game but with a grappling hook mechanic that felt so natural it might as well have always been there. It also added more dimension to the game by giving additional options for the player to find the most optimal route through each level.

There’s really nothing I love more than the Mikey games, and to get a double dose of them in one week is a real treat. Like all GameClub’s releases thus far, if you were a previous owner of Mikey Hooks then you’ll be able to get this updated version for free whether you’re a GameClub subscriber or not. However, like with Mikey Shorts GameClub wasn’t able to use the existing app ID with Mikey Hooks and so it won’t be able to auto-recognize previous owners. Instead you should get a pop-up in-game about being a previous owner that’ll allow you to fill out a brief form which GameClub will use to manually unlock the game for you. If you have any trouble with that you can contact GameClub directly and they’ll help you out. And if you weren’t a previous owner, you can and SHOULD still try out Mikey Hooks or any of GameClub’s other releases in a limited fashion for free to see if their fantastic service is something you’d be interested in.