Pocket Gamer weekly wrap-up - Terraria v Junk Jack, Spelunky Vita, Blackbar walkthrough

The Room epilogue guide! Disney Infinity! Killzone beta tips!

| Sep 1, 2013

Welcome back to the Pocket Gamer weekly wrap up. In this article, we look back at Pocket Gamer's best content from the last seven days. We've got massive guides, hot previews, and big features.

We've got our reviews and coverage of the week's biggest iOS, 3DS, and PS Vita games, our most popular news stories, and updates from around the world of Steel Media.

Let's take a look…

New releases

This week, it was all-out war between a pair of side-scrolling Minecraft-alikes.

In the red corner, it's Terraria. We said that the game's "mix of creative crafting and endless exploration will keep you rapt for weeks", but warned that a lack of multiplayer and some wonky touchscreen controls let the experience down.

And in the blue corner, its scrappy upstart Junk Jack X. Our review is in the works, but in our new releases round-up, we said that Jack's simultaneous release with Terraria might not be a suicide mission…

"*Junk Jack X* is better than Terraria in a number of ways - it has multiplayer, the controls are better-suited to mobile, and it's more welcoming to new players".

You can, as always, read about all the other notable iOS games that came out this week, in our round-up.

In handheld land, PlayStation Vita received ruthless roguelike platformer Spelunky. Mike signed off his review by saying "Play Spelunky". I concur.

Things weren't quite so hot for Nintendo 3DS. Disney PR gave us the run-around with the review copy of Disney Infinity. We bought the game and, surprise surprise, it's crap. It's just some "some tatty mini-games", says Peter.

Feature creep

Brilliant iOS and Android box poker The Room got an update this week, which added a new room, a new box, and a new raft of taxing logic puzzles. We've got a full guide if you happen to get stuck.

Same goes for dystopian text adventure Blackbar. It's a smart game about fighting back against censorship, but boy does it get hard. We've got a complete walkthrough to Blackbar, riiiight here.

We reviewed the Nvidia Shield - the chunky clam-shell Android with a controller grafted onto it. Sounds a bit mad, but "if you're the right kind of player then it could potentially be your number one gaming device," says Damien.

We're still reporting on all the cool stuff we saw at Gamescom. Mike tells tales of Phil Fish's Fez - the mind-bending Escher-esque puzzler - and Murasaki Baby - an emotional adventure with a unique art style. Both are heading Vitawards.

Rob went hands-on with clever spot-the-difference game Symmetrain, and a Tegra platformer called Flyhunter Origins. He also listed the hottest prospects from our Big Indie Pitch event.

James went hands-on with Galaxy on Fire - Alliances and eyes-on with Google Glass game Escape!

We penned a pair of handy guides for those who just picked up Spelunky on Vita. Newbie newcomer? You'll want our survival guide. Grizzled veteran? Check out our secrets guide.

Oh, and if you're on mobile and feeling a bit left out, we picked out some Spelunky-esque mobile games that you might enjoy.

And finally, we've got some handy tips for the Killzone: Mercenary beta on PS Vita, which is now available to all Vita gamers. We've got a review of the full game coming next week, by the way, so look out for that.

News beat

Let's try something new this week. These are the most exciting news story - as voted by you, the reader. As in, these got the most mouse clicks (or tablet taps):

Mark Brown

Mark Brown spent several years slaving away at the Steel Media furnace, finally serving as editor at large of Pocket Gamer before moving on to doing some sort of youtube thing.

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