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…
Undervault
It seems everyone is going gaga for Apple Arcade this week, and with good reason, but that doesn’t mean that there haven’t been some good quality releases “the old-fashioned way." One such game that I’ve found myself coming back to a bunch is Undervault ($2.99) from developer Andrii Bychkovskyi. It’s a game that’s actually been available on desktop and Android for a couple of years already, and has developed a fan base with those versions, but this week it’s iOS users who finally get a chance to see what it’s all about.
Undervault is a pretty standard roguelike dungeon crawler, but with a pretty nonstandard board game-style layout. This means you’re moving from room to room as if they’re cards laid out on a table, and in each type of room you’ll explore to find items or fight with some enemies. Occasionally you’ll come across an unknown room and here you’ll actually spin a wheel to see what type of room materializes there. You can find cards that can guarantee certain types of rooms, and what type of room you’re able to create in these unknown spaces is actually very key to doing well as you move deeper and deeper into the dungeon.
If you’re the type of person that enjoys traditional roguelike games where it’s all about finding random items and making the best of whatever hand you’re dealt each time you play, I think you’ll enjoy the unique spin on the formula that Undervault presents. It’s not much to look at but it does have a certain kind of charm and it’s got the gameplay chops where it counts. Like many roguelike games, it seems overly simple at first but slowly reveals its depth the more you play and figure out the mechanics. Undervault will set you back just three bucks and there’s no IAP, so any dungeon divers out there should definitely give it a look.
