November 9

Good morning! Welcome to our regular article where we write a little about some of the games we’ve been playing over the past few days. This week we’re nostalgic for how Agatha Harkness used play in Marvel Snapwe are surprised by a new Smurfs game and we finally find one Vampire Survivors clone good enough to stand on its own. What did you play?

Find old editions of this column in our Archives of what we played.

Marvel Snap, iOS

Agatha Harkness is my favorite card in Marvel Snap. When I play, I like surprises – surprises for me as much as for the person I’m playing against. So I play a lot of cards that add random cards to the game: I like to be surprised by the cards I have in my hand. And then there is Agathe. Agatha makes your plays for you, then plays the final round herself. Surprise after surprise: I don’t know what cards I’m going to receive and I don’t even know how I’m going to play them.

The fact is, that’s how Agatha worked. I returned recently after a decent absence and, to my horror, Agatha had been changed. Now she plays even turns and the player plays odd turns. At first I was so upset by this that I wanted to delete the app and stop playing forever. But I held on for a bit and… are you okay?

As expected, Agatha is now a much more viable card. She’s wild, but her wildness has limits, and you have the opportunity to try to build off of the random decisions she makes. Agatha now resembles a dialogue. I think it’s super smart, and exactly the kind of thoughtful changes I expect from the people running the game.

However, a part of me still misses the original Agatha, the one that was all or nothing. I accelerate, brakes fail, no steering. It was Marvel Snap because I played it for a surprisingly long time. It’s a shame that the experience is gone, but I know I’ll keep playing anyway.

-Chris Donlan

The Smurfs: Dreams, Switch demo

Last year, Grinch Christmas Adventures was the game I played with my 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 challenger that’s come to fight for its place as my family’s favorite: The Smurfs: Dreams.

It’s worth saying that we’ve only gotten our hands on a demo, but we’ve replayed it several times now and each time we discover something new. A curse has fallen on the Smurfs, so you must enter their dreams (like the other Smurfs) and save them from the nightmares they contain. The first level looks like a dream, a land made of sweets and cakes, although it’s not really because of the digestive problems caused by too much consumption: 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 some puzzles can only be solved by checking the reflected world, and a few items can only be found looking at the paths in the reflected world, not the one you are currently in. Having to move your Smurf around the real world while using his thinking 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.

-Married

Karate Survivor, PC

How to improve Vampire Survivors, this auto-attack fidget spinner from a game released a few years ago? It was a huge success that so many games have attempted, but it’s also a deceptively difficult task, because even though it seems like someone pulled it off on their school break, Vampire Survivors does what it does very well. You need a relatively simple idea and, a bit like Kill the arrow I guess that nails it in a charming, lo-fi way. Adding anything more to it would almost drown it out, so what do you do?

Karate Survivor has an idea. It takes the core of Vampire Survivors – an auto-attacking hero who levels up and gains new abilities while beating screens full of enemies – and adds satisfying new systems. It also does so using one of the most appealing themes I can think of: martial arts films of the 80s and 90s – think Rumble in the Bronx. You are – as far as I’m concerned – Jackie Chan, tumbling through kitchens, bars and pool tables while hitting people with lampshades, sabotaging their pots and generally making a huge mess. It’s great – it looks great too. There’s an oversized, bright ’90s pixelated shock to the proceedings, and the martial arts animations are beautifully captured.

At the center of it all is probably the smartest thing of all: an ability system based on sequential order and combos. As you level up and open chest-like items, you gain red or blue attacks. Place a red attack next to a red attack and they combine, meaning they do more damage. Go further and place a number one red attack next to a number two red attack and the combo explodes; Now when you hit people, an additional special effect will trigger, causing much more damage than a normal hit. Chain several together and you could be devastatingly powerful, and you’ll need to be to survive whatever the game throws at you.

For now, I love it. I love the timing, as you wait for your next sequence of attacks to trigger, and I love the energy he injects through his kung fu mayhem. It’s only cheap – go try it!

-Bertie