Month: March 2020

While ATVG Slept, Hyper Light Drifter & Oddmar Hit Apple TV

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As a gaming platform, Apple TV can easily be described as having a quirky charm.

Something about the strange mix of games, the unpredictable nature of those games arriving out of the blue, and the obscurity of the platform, hiding in plain sight from mainstream gamers despite the giant household name behind it, all combine to generate this charming quirkiness.

The games that exist on Apple TV outside the safe, newly built walls of Apple Arcade are nothing if not diverse, both in quality and genre, with the only real triple A offerings available being those of the ‘Triple Indie’ variety. It’s the occasional and surprising arrival of these ‘Triple Indies’ that also lends Apple TV much of its personality.

There’s some big-hitters – Barbearian, Inside, Evoland 2, Teslagrad, Dandara, Transistor and Dead Cells to name a few.

As a shortlist, Apple TV gamers would do very well to start with those.

For most of January, all of February, and the bulk of March, The Apple TV Gaming Blog made like a woodchuck and hibernated, concentrating on non-gaming related hobbies, and while this blog slept, two big indie titles snuck onto the platform, ready to be discovered and enjoyed by Apple TV gamers.

Continue reading “While ATVG Slept, Hyper Light Drifter & Oddmar Hit Apple TV” →

No New Apple Arcade Games – But Loads Of Free Content Updates

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My Saturday morning routine is now set.

Out of bed and over to the coffee machine to put on a brew. The pot takes about fifteen minutes to do its thing, filling the apartment with an aroma soon to be tasted. And drunk. Taken in, imbibed, absorbed. Nay, worshipped.

While the machine is doing its thing, grab the iPad and check for new Apple Arcade games. A pleasant little anticipatory buzz as the Arcade section of the App Store loads, to reveal . . . this morning . . . nothing.

That’s okay. The upside is it makes next Saturday a little more exciting, knowing the odds are even better. The other upside this weekend was discovering a bunch of content updates to existing Arcade titles, one of the most notable of which was the conclusion to Shantae’s adventure.

Actually, it felt like Part 2 of Shantae and the Seven Sirens was released in lieu of new Arcade titles this weekend, which seems like a fair compromise.

The last few weeks have seen a slew of notable content updates to Apple Arcade titles, and as stated in today’s previous post, your Apple Arcade subscription is like a season pass to all the games on the service, granting players instant access to future content at no extra cost. Love it.

Hit the continue button below for a look at a handful of Arcade titles that received some big, fat content updates in the last 24 hours or so.

Continue reading “No New Apple Arcade Games – But Loads Of Free Content Updates” →

Shantae And The Seven Sirens – The End Is Now

Okay, maybe that headline was a little melodramatic, but it’s hard not to be at the moment.

When studio Wayforward – now in its 30th year of making games – released the long-awaited fifth title in the Shantae series as an Apple Arcade launch title in September 2019, it didn’t actually give players the whole game. Only Part 1 was released,  with Part 2 set to come at an unannounced later date.

Well that unannounced later date has arrived – Part 2 hit your Apple Arcade collection as a free update to Shantae and the Seven Sirens today, along with a whole raft of improvements.

PC and console gamers were also treated to an announcement today by Wayforward, with the studio revealing the release date for those platforms.

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The First Coronavirus Lockdown Apple Arcade Twitch Stream By Screentimes

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You missed it. It’s over. But there will be more.

I woke this morning and was prompted into action after seeing a post on Twitter by Sigmund Judge – head honcho of Screen-times. Judge was about to go live from London with his first-ever Twitch stream during the Coronavirus-induced mandatory lockdown, beaming Apple Arcade games out into the void.

It ended up being a coming together of Apple TV gaming Avengers – with the extended universe of MrMacRight and yours truly from The Apple TV Gaming Blog chatting complete nonsense in the chat box, while our host Judge held forth on vocals and trying not to get shot in the face in Butter Royale.

For the uninitiated – MrMacRight has the best YouTube channel for all things Apple gaming (across all devices), while Screentimes is currently building a new site, soon to relaunch and dispense wisdom on all things Apple, with a big focus on entertainment (think Apple TV+) and Apple TV gaming.

But wait. Before we go any further. Where the hell has ATVG been the last couple of months? Gone fishing? Again?

Continue reading “The First Coronavirus Lockdown Apple Arcade Twitch Stream By Screentimes” →