Every Monday, Super Auto Pets shakes his big bag of animals and pulls a new roster for his ‘Weekly Pack’ mode. SAP is my favorite auto-battler, and offering a whole new meta every week keeps me coming back long after I’d stopped playing. I enjoy the flow for a week as builds rise and fall on an accelerated timescale before everything is wiped clean and starts again on Monday. Which makes me wonder: what’s the best day of your game week, dear reader?
Super Auto Pets is a lighthearted, colorful and sleek auto battler, a bit like Dota Auto Chess in Monster Train smothered with a load of cute animals. It was one of our favorite games of 2021 and I’m excited to still be playing in 2022. This is mainly thanks to the Weekly Pack mode.
Regular Super Auto Pets is divided into three matchmaking pools: the basic package that everyone can play with; the first expansion; and the second extension. Each has different units and some have different foods (buffs). They’re fun and anything but, like any multiplayer game, they get overly familiar and stale, especially when dominant builds appear. That’s why I love the Weekly Pack option that was added for free to all players in May alongside the launch of the second expansion.
Every Monday, the Weekly Pack picks a new selection of animals and foods, which are immersed in all three packs (even the paid ones), as well as some additional weekly exclusivities. I love my first few runs when I figure out what’s even in the pack (you can look in a menu, but that’s definitely for cheaters). It’s a good surprise to go through a run and discover pets that you could hang a build on, or push a build over the top, or completely antagonize you.
From there, it’s hard to get a solid reading when the game has asynchronous multiplayer and massive chance elements, but: I think there’s a definite flow to the week. Obvious builds and combos are everywhere on Mondays. People are quick to spot animals that will crush and lean on them for the first few rounds. This can develop into a dominant build for a while, or it can falter as people struggle to transition that into the mid and endgame. You may see a new dominant build emerging to replace it. Perhaps counterparts of that build will become commonplace. Then, by the time it starts to get a little stale, a little settled, Monday comes and we start all over again. It is awesome. Or this may be entirely my perception, in which case: don’t tell me; I do not want to know.
And if the latest roster is crappy (so far this week hasn’t really done it for me), I’ll just play other games until Monday shakes it up again.
By the way, Super Auto Pets is free to play on Steam, Android and iOS, with a browser version on Itch. The basic package and the weekly package are free for everyone, and frankly they are enough game.
The most exciting day of my game week used to be Tuesday, when Destiny 2 refreshes activities, rewards, and merchants, and the seasonal storyline takes an inch. Lots of raids on Tuesdays to get the jump to the ground. But I’m done with the grind and haven’t played in months. Hooray for me.
I also used to religiously play the daily challenges in Slay The Spire and The Binding Of Isaac: Rebirth, although that pace no longer works with my life and I fell out of the habit. No, a new meta every week is a good time frame for me – and a pretty dramatic change.
Do you have rhythms in your game week, dear reader? ‘Morning Wordle’ still seems like a big part of many friends’ days. This is a vague question, but I’m generally curious about the habits you’ve developed in response to what games do, rather than your general availability in the real world.
