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…

Mikey Boots

This week saw the release of BeaverTap Games’ latest effort Mikey Boots ($1.99), and when it came time for Eli and myself to pick our Game of the Week it was an easy choice. As any TouchArcade regular knows, we’re massive fans of the Mikey series of games. The original Mikey Shorts launched just over two years ago and quickly became my favorite platformer on iOS. BeaverTap nailed the controls, and with its impeccable level design, Mikey Shorts became an addiction of sorts as you tried to shave precious milliseconds off of each level’s completion time and compete with the greats on the leaderboards.

That said, Mikey Shorts was almost exclusively focused on speedrunning. Sure, it was still fun just to take your time and play through it for the sake of completion, but it wasn’t a terribly challenging game. There were no enemies to speak of, and no major penalties for doing poorly. Their follow-up title, Mikey Hooks, addressed those problems while at the same time seamlessly adding a major new mechanic to the formula in the form of hook swinging. Mikey Hooks was a more challenging game, and despite adding such a big new mechanic, it still very much felt like a Mikey game. It’s pretty much what I hope for from sequels: More of the same, yes, but also a very different experience that feels fresh without alienating fans of the original.

Mikey Hooks nailed that, and with Mikey Boots, BeaverTap has done that same thing but at an even greater level. You almost couldn’t call Mikey Boots a platformer at all, or at least not a traditional platformer. The directional arrows and buttons are gone, and your character Mikey (or, for the first time in the series, his female counterpart Miley if you choose) run automatically in whatever direction they’re facing when on the ground. Jumping has been replaced with cave flyer-style flying, like that in Jetpack Joyride. You know the drill: press the right side of the screen to float diagonally upwards, let go to fall diagonally downwards. In Mikey Boots it goes one further, and you can press the left side of the screen to jetpack in that direction, so despite featuring auto-running you actually still have complete control over where your character goes.

You’d think that with such a drastic change Mikey Boots might feel like an entirely different game from its siblings, but shockingly that’s not the case. It doesn’t take long to warm up to the jetpacking, and once you do, it’s business as usual as you try to collect every coin, avoid enemies and hazards, and hopefully end up at each level’s finish line with a record time. The level designs are again absolutely top-notch, and in many instances they feel even more interesting than in previous Mikey games due to the fact that you can do things with the jetpacking that wouldn’t have been possible being bound to the normal laws of gravity.

Mikey Boots is yet another excellent entry in the Mikey series, and it’s for all the obvious reasons. It has even better visuals with more vibrant colors and more detailed backgrounds. It has a new female character and lots of new costume items to unlock. It has brilliantly designed levels, and there’s more initial levels here than in any previous Mikey game on launch. It’s more of a good thing but bigger and better, like a sequel should be, and you can read all about it in our 5 star review. However, the thing that impresses me most about Mikey Boots is how well BeaverTap has handled making a drastically different game that still feels in line with other games in the series. They should write a how-to book on making sequels. So if you liked previous Mikey games and are craving more, well, you know what to do.