Sometimes it’s best to keep it simple. This week’s selection of new Android games is pretty laid back, with a deliberately undemanding version of Boggle, a light deflection game with mirrors, and a cat tapping game.
There are more complex experiences, however, such as the highly anticipated Warhammer: Odyssey, albeit in the form of a softlaunch – and a fairly bug-filled softlaunch.
SinTales, meanwhile, looks weird.
Interestingly, this is the second hand-drawn game we’ve covered in two weeks. This time we take a look at Inked, an isometric puzzle with visuals based on ballpoint pen drawings. It won awards before its release, winning Game Connect Asia’s 2020 Indie Developement Grant Award, and it looks great.
We don’t always imagine a game is released when it’s just softlaunch, but this softlaunch is different. Warhammer: Odyssey is available pretty much everywhere, which means you can download and play it for free right now. The only problem is that you will have to deal with bugs and issues if initial user reviews are anything to go by.
Wordsmyth is a Boggle-style word game with a meaningful twist: there is no timer. This means you can get in and out all day, slowly digging through the 3 × 3 letter grid until you’re convinced you can’t go any further. It’s pretty, too, with a range of meditative and unpretentious backdrops to go along with your word search.
“Why did Little Red Hood get lost and kill friends because of jealousy?” This is a good question, which we cannot hope to answer in this short paragraph. All you need to do is play SinTales, a new fairytale RPG from T-T-Play. And while you’re at it, you may find out, “What kind of betrayal caused Dorothy to completely sacrifice her original self?” It sounds crazy.
Lyxo has one of the simplest premises. All you have to do is deflect the light towards a target using a series of reflective surfaces. Somehow, developer Emoak managed to clear 87 increasingly difficult levels from this concept. The result is a stylish new puzzle.
The prospect of a cyberpunk RPG looked a lot more appealing ahead of CD Project’s highly anticipated Cyberpunk 2077 launch with a catalog of glitches and flaws, but you shouldn’t let that put you off Abysswalker, a visually impressive, drenched post-apocalyptic RPG neon light from 9SplayDeveloper.
Greedy Cats is an unimaginative but absolutely bombproof game concept. Brought to you by laid back supremo PikPok, this is a colorful, self-aware clicker where you tap the screen to make a variety of cute cats stuff their faces. The more you touch, the more fans you add to your cat’s audience, prompting them to eat more. He can’t miss.