What about your weekly gaming rhythms, reader dear?
Every Monday, Super Auto Pets shakes its big bag of animals and draws a fresh selection for its ‘Weekly Pack’ mode. SAP is my favourite auto-battler, and offering a whole new meta every week has me coming back long after I would’ve stopped playing. I do enjoy the flow across a week as builds rise and fall on an accelerated timescale before everything is wiped clean and starts over on Monday. Which makes me wonder: what’s the best day of your gaming week, reader dear?
Super Auto Pets is a breezy, colourful, and slimline auto-battler, a bit like Dota Auto Chess smooshed into Monster Train with a load of cute animals. It was one of our our favourite games of 2021, and I’m delighted to still be playing in 2022. This is mostly thanks to the Weekly Pack mode.
Regular Super Auto Pets is divided into three matchmaking pools: the base pack everyone can play with; the first expansion; and the second expansion. Each has different units and some have different foods (buffs). They’re fun and all but, like any multiplayer game, do grow overly familiar and stale, especially once dominant builds emerge. That’s why I so adore the Weekly Pack option added free for all players in May alongside the second expansion launch.
Every Monday, the Weekly Pack chooses a new selection of animals and foods, dipping into all three packs (even the paid ones) as well as some extra Weekly exclusives. I like my first few runs as I figure out what’s even in the pack (you can look in a menu, but that’s surely for cheaters). It’s a good surprise to proceed through a run and discover pets that you could hang a build off, or that might push a build over the top, or could completely counter you.
From there, it’s hard to get a firm read when the game has asynchronous multiplayer and huge elements of chance but: I think there’s a definite flow to the week. Obvious builds and combos are everywhere on Monday. People quickly spot animals that’ll crush the first few rounds and lean on them. This might develop into a dominant build for a while, or it might falter as people struggle to transition that into the mid- and endgame. Perhaps you’ll see a new dominant build rise to replace it. Maybe counters to that build will become common. Then by the time it starts to feel a little stale, a little solved, Monday comes and we start all over again. It’s great. Or this could be entirely my perception, in which case: don’t tell me; I don’t want to know.
And if the latest selection sucks (so far, this week isn’t really doing it for me), I’ll just play other games until Monday shakes it up again.
Super Auto Pets is free-to-play on Steam, Android, and iOS, by the way, with a browser version on Itch. The base pack and Weekly Pack are free for everyone, and honestly they’re plenty enough game.
The most exciting day of my gaming week used to be Tuesday, when Destiny 2 refreshes activities, rewards, and vendors, and the seasonal storyline inches forward. Lots of raids on Tuesdays to get the jump on the grind. But I’m done with the grind and haven’t played at all in months. Hooray for me.
I used to religiously play the daily challenges in Slay The Spire and The Binding Of Isaac: Rebirth too, though that pace doesn’t work with my life anymore and I fell out of the habit. No, a new meta every week is a good timescale for me—and a nice dramatic change.
Do you have any rhythms to your gaming week, reader dear? ‘Morning Wordle’ seems a big part of many pals’ days still. This is a vague question but I’m broadly curious in the habits you’ve developed in response to what games do rather than your general real-world availability.
Super Auto Pets
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