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…
_PRISM
To fully appreciate _PRISM, it’s important to know where it comes from. Stugan, in their own words, “is a non-profit accelerator program for aspiring game developers, helping new teams and individuals to realise their wildest game ideas. Spend two months of your life in the woods, far away from civilization building the game of your dreams." _PRISM is the first game to come out of that, and I think sky-high expectations are totally appropriate when a game is born in a cabin in the woods filled with a bunch of other indie devs and other game dev (and game business) superstars. Unsurprisingly, _PRISM does not disappoint.
Origin stories only get you so far, but what about the game itself? I suppose the easiest way to describe it is if you took The Room series of games, but replaced all the mysterious puzzle boxes and keys with more abstract shapes and graphical doodads. Like The Room games, _PRISM is another title that feels like it truly could only exist on touch devices, which is always a cool thing to experience.
At its most basic, you’ll start out with a shape like a cube, and you’ll need to spin it around to find a puzzle on one of its faces. You might need to slide something, rotate something else to line up dots, and proceed further into the puzzle. Another puzzle might appear on another face, or you might open the cube up to reveal even more crazy things inside of it. The game proceeds like this with difficulty that quickly ramps up to the point that solving some of the puzzles are real brain teasers.
The reaction to the game in our forums has been nearly universally positive, with the only real downside being it’s a little on the short side. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: I’ll take a short game with a great concept that’s amazing from start to finish than a game that drags out for hours and hours. Oh, and while you’re playing it, make sure you’ve got sound on, it’ll greatly add to the overall experience.
