November 9
Hello! Welcome back to our regular section where we write a little about some of the games we've been playing over the past few days. This week we feel nostalgic about how Agatha Harkness used To play in Marvel Snap, we are unexpectedly surprised by a new Smurfs game and finally find a Vampire Survivors clone good enough to stand on its own. What have you been playing?
Catch up on previous editions of this column in our What We've Been Playing archive.
Marvel Snap, iOS
Agatha Harkness is my favorite card in Marvel Snap. When I play, I like surprises, both for myself and who I play against. That's why I play a lot of cards that add random cards to the deck: I like to be surprised by the cards in my hand. Then there's Agatha. Agatha makes your plays for you and then plays herself in the final round. Surprise after surprise: I don't know what cards I will receive and I don't even know how I will play them.
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The thing is, that's how Agatha worked. I recently came in after a decent absence and, to my horror, Agatha had been traded. Now she makes plays on even turns and the player makes plays on odd turns. At first this bothered me so much that I wanted to delete the app and stop playing forever. But I held on for a bit and… is it okay?
As expected, Agatha is now a much more viable card. She's wild, but her wildness has limits, and there's room for you to try to build off of the random decisions she makes. Agatha now feels like a dialogue. I think it's very clever and just the kind of thoughtful edits I expect from the people running the game.
However, part of me still misses the original Agatha, the one who was all or nothing. When accelerating, the brakes failed and there was no steering. This was Marvel Snap as I played it for a surprisingly long time. It's a shame the experience is over, but I know I'll keep playing anyway.
-Chris Donlan
The Smurfs: Dreams, Switch demo
Last year, Grinch Christmas Adventures was the game I sat down and played with family members during the colder months, and there's a good chance that will be the case this year. But there's a new local multiplayer challenge that's here to fight for its place as my family's favorite: The Smurfs: Dreams.
It's worth saying that we only had one demo, but we've repeated it several times and each time we discovered something new. A curse has fallen on the Smurfs, so you must enter their dreams (like other Smurfs) and save them from their nightmares. The first level seems like a dream, a land made of sweets and cakes, although in reality it is not because of the digestive discomfort caused by eating too much: most of the Smurfs have turned green!
But it's the second level where I really clicked with the game. It's a world made of mirrors, so certain puzzles can only be solved by looking at the reflected world, and some items can only be found by looking at paths in the reflected world, not the one you're currently in. Having to move your Smurf in the real world while also using his reflection to solve or overcome obstacles added another dimension to the level that I really wasn't expecting to find, especially in a demo.
In short, I'm sold. Oh smurf.
-Maria
Karate survivor, personal computer
How can you improve Vampire Survivors, that auto-attack game that came out a couple of years ago? It was a huge success that many games have tried, but it's also a deceptively difficult task, because even though it looks like someone pulled it off during the school holidays, Vampire Survivors does what it does very well. It takes a relatively simple idea and, a bit like Slay the Spire I suppose, achieves it in a charmingly lo-fi way. Adding anything else to it would almost suffocate it, so what do you do?
Karate Survivor has an idea. It takes the core of Vampire Survivors – a self-attacking hero who levels up and gains new abilities while defeating screens full of enemies – and adds satisfying new systems. He also does it using one of the most engaging themes I can think of: martial arts movies from the 80s and 90s; think Rumble in the Bronx. You are, as far as I'm concerned, Jackie Chan, hanging around kitchens, bars and pool tables while hitting people with lampshades, throwing saucepans at them and generally making a huge mess. It feels great, it looks great too. There's a big, bright '90s pixelated tone to the proceedings, and the martial arts animations are captured wonderfully.
At the center of it all is probably the smartest thing of all: a skill system based on sequential order and combos. As you level up and open chest-like things, you get red or blue attacks. Put a red attack next to a red attack and they combine, meaning they deal more damage. Go one step further and place a red number one attack next to a red number two attack and the combo will explode; Now when you hit someone, an additional special effect is activated that deals much more damage than a normal hit. Chain together a bunch of these and you can be, and will have to be, devastatingly powerful to survive whatever the game throws at you.
For now I love it. I love the moment it happens, as you wait for the next sequence of attacks to activate, and I love the energy he injects through his kung-fu mayhem. It's just cheap – try it!
-Bertie