Apple Arcade Avalanche

Plus: Steam Deck, Racoon Tycoon, and Final Fantamay continues

Happy Thursday, Button Friends!

Anyone else eagerly anticipating Eurovision this weekend? Truly the greatest time of year.

This week we dive into the avalanche of new Apple Arcade releases, how the Steam Deck has changed Tim’s view on PC gaming, Alice becomes a Racoon Tycoon, and the celebration of Final Fantasy continues.

Enjoy!

Apple launches 20 new Apple Arcade games in one day

By Alice

One of the fun things about Apple Arcade is that it generally has a pretty consistent release cadence; there is a new game every week(ish). But, once every year or so, Apple will just suddenly unleash 20 or so games all at once, which is what Apple did last week. Last year’s game dump (for want of a better term) was all about classic games like Solitaire. This year’s avalanche was more eclectic, with a mix of mobile gaming classics, branded takes on older games, and new games from developers with proven track records.

What’s kinda beautiful is that this release shows the full depth and breadth of what mobile gaming can be. There is a moving meditation on grief in Limbo+, a delightful romp about family dynamics and the complication of having tentacles for arms in Octodad: Dadliest Catch+, a shameless branded cash grab with Disney Coloring World+ AND WHATEVER WEIRDNESS IS GOING ON IN WHAT THE CAR?. That’s a lot of extra value for $7.99 a month, given how consistently good the Apple Arcade library is.

One of the new games has my entire family under some kind of spell: Disney SpellStruck comes from the co-creator of Words With Friends, and has a lot of what made WWF fun: two player scrabble with no time limit so you have your turn whenever it’s convenient for you. But there are no ads or in-app purchases (as is the way with Apple Arcade), there are Disney characters which can act as your ‘heroes’ to give you special powers (extra starting squares, bonus letter tiles, etc), and also you can’t use any words Mickey Mouse himself wouldn’t approve of.

It's not perfect, I’ve lost several games because of the more sanitised dictionary (also because of inconsistencies with accepting American/British English spellings), but it has all the fun of scrabble with extra gamey elements, so I can see us playing it for a long time to come.

As for the rest of the games, I have some flights coming up and look forward to trying them all out then.

What to play

• This week’s free games on the Epic Game Store are Against All Odds, Horizon Chase Turbo and  Kao The Kangaroo. But be quick! They go back to costing actual money at 1am tonight. 

• My (Alice) first introduction to mobile games was Snake on my Nokia 8210. I was obsessed with beating my cousin’s high score and would play every day on the bus to school. Snake.io+ on Apple Arcade is a different kind of Snake that follows the same basic idea as the original (don’t crash into stuff), but makes it more about not crashing into your opponents while you try to get as long as possible. It’s more addictive than it is fun, but it’s still a good way to pass the time while in line when you can’t have audio on, or something.

• Temple Run is back and I (Alice) will never be free. Temple Run took over my friendship group around a decade ago and we got way overly competitive trying to beat each other’s scores. I think my longest run took 40 minutes, and after I beat everyone else’s scores I deleted it from my phone. Anyway, Temple Run+ is now on Apple Arcade, and I have some scores to beat. Let us know in the comments what your high score is to give us something to aim for (my previous high score was around 11,800,000).

• Obviously, it’s a new console Zelda launch week, one of only (I think) eight that have happened in my lifetime. And yes that’s how I (Tim) choose to mark my progression from cradle to grave rather than the traditional “years”. Eight console Zeldas old. I’ll be back next week with more to say once I’ve actually played it, but I’m sure you don’t need me to tell you this is a profound event that will affect the identities of millions of people. No pressure Nintendo.

• The PlayStation Store’s perpetual state of having multiple sales on continues. For Golden Week you can get older must-plays Gravity Rush and The Last Guardian for around $20 each, or Resident Evil 2 Remake for $14. In the “May Savings” sale (they’re not even trying) I spotted Doom Eternal for $18, and Guardians of the Galaxy for $30.

Setting PC games free

By Tim

I’ve never been huge on PC gaming, mostly because I equate sitting at a desk with working. Attempts to adapt PCs to my lounge room have always ended with a frustration of hubs, laptop keyboards and trying to get a mouse to work in places it really shouldn’t.

For the most part this has suited me fine, because almost all games are available on consoles. But it still hurt to be locked out of the kind that aren’t; early access titles, low budget indies, really old PC stuff, visual novels, things that really need a mouse.

So it’s not surprising that this esoteric PC fare is what I’ve been mostly concerned with since getting a Steam Deck, and I’ve honestly been blown away at how well it works. A lot of new games support controllers, but even those that don’t can be made to work just fine.

Mouse movement can be mapped to the sticks, but generally works much more comfortably with either of the tactile little touchpads either side of the screen. Touching the screen directly also simulates moving the mouse there and clicking, which makes point-and-click adventure games feel like native phone apps. Any button on the thing can be bound to a mouse action or a keyboard key, and in almost all cases someone has done that work for you, saving the setup as a community layout you can download and use in seconds.

Any time you actually need to type is still a hassle, but it’s easy to invoke a virtual keyboard and do a quick tap.

Promotions for the Steam Deck tend to focus on mainstream AAA games that are “verified”, and I certainly enjoy having those on the go, including Marvel’s Midnight Suns and the most recent Tomb Raider trilogy. But I mostly appreciate having an easy way to curl up on the couch and play things like April Fools oddity The Murder of Sonic the Hedgehog, or the incredible mouse-only detective game Case of the Golden Idol, or janky old favourites like Hexen and Deus Ex.

So as excited as I am for other upcoming portable PCs like the ROG Ally, which offer more power and direct Windows compatibility, I also hope the focus on translating PC controls and mechanics to a handheld is there. Because for me, that’s the whole appeal.

Bricks, Boards and Beginnings 

by Alice

For many of us, Monopoly was one of the first board games we played, so it has a special place in our hearts. Unfortunately, Monopoly sucks, so the quest to find a “good Monopoly” becomes an important part of playing board games as an adult. In some ways, Ticket To Ride fills part of this niche, but in other ways Racoon Tycoon is a better and more adorable Monopoly replacement (not a better game, but more closely aligned with Monopoly in a way that doesn’t suck).

You play as a racoon, and your goal is to produce and sell commodities to then purchase railroads, towns or buildings.

There is no rent, no dice rolling, and games go pretty quick. Most websites quote playtime as being around 60-90 minutes, but my family got through it in 45 minutes with four players pretty consistently.

Railroads and towns give larger amounts of victory points at the end, but buildings give players the biggest advantages. Annoyingly, the buildings aren’t particularly balanced, and some groups might want to remove some of the more overpowered buildings from the box to make the game a little fairer. For example, railroads all need to be auctioned to be sold, and there is a building that grants the owner a $5 commission for every auction. I won every single game by buying that building. There are other buildings that give the owner $1 per particular type of commodity sold, which also tip the scales in their favour, but there are more of those in the deck.

However, even with the lack of balance, I strongly recommend it for ages 10+. It’s quick and easy to learn (even my parents had it pretty much down by the second game, and normally they take 3-4 games for rules to click), the art is cute, and there’s a lot of room for different strategies to play out.

Retro Esoterica

by Tim

Final Fantamay: Part 2

Barely anybody in Australia has nostalgic memories of the first three Final Fantasy games on NES, because they weren’t released here. But many of us have since come to love and appreciate them through imports or emulation, and although they’re fantastic examples of late 80s RPGs they’re very unfriendly for new players. So, do the new pixel remasters let the original brilliance shine through without sullying the experience for retro-heads?

Surprisingly, I think they do. The most noticeable change is that the chunky 8-bit graphics have been wholly swapped out for a pseudo-SNES look, which was a bit of a shock but I’ve come around to it. Sprites and characters have in most cases been remade to resemble the originals, though occasionally (notably with the heroes in FFII) they’re inspired by the concept art that has come to define modern versions. Meanwhile battles have full backgrounds now rather than black, and plainly modern effects like fog or flares punctuate certain environments and effects.

The newly orchestrated music is beautiful, from calming guitar in the pastoral towns to sweeping violins in overworld themes. With very few exceptions these are the same tunes you’ll remember from the NES games, just recorded anew with oversight from original composer Nobuo Uematsu. I honestly thought I would continue to prefer the bleeps and bloops (which are an option), but the refreshed versions won me over. Special mentions go to the mournful opening hours of FFII, and the heavy metal treatment of the FFIII battle theme.

All this goes a long way to easing the retro jank for new players while giving olds the warm and fuzzies, but what about the play?

By default the games all work nearly exactly like they used to; there are only some balance tweaks, retranslations, maps, quality of life menu changes and an expanded save system. New players would absolutely struggle without frequent grinding and access to a guide, if it weren’t for some great (optional) assist features. 

You can increase experience and money gained from battle by x2 or x4 (including skill points in FFII), which essentially makes every battle into two or four. And you can turn off encounters whenever you like, which is bad for your character’s growth but lets you figure out your surroundings or escape to safety without the constant threat of death.

Next week: How to improve on SNES excellence