Hello everyone, and welcome to the week! It’s time once again for our look back at the noteworthy updates of the last seven days. You can tell the annual freeze is almost upon us, because we’re getting buried in updates. Christmas updates a-plenty, but there are lots of other non-holiday related ones as well. Of course, you can keep an eye out for updates yourself using AppShopper Social (Free), the watchlist in the TouchArcade App (Free), or by participating in the TouchArcade forums, but this weekly summary is here to fill in the things you might have missed. Let’s dig in!

Dan The Man, Free In my review of this game, I said it was great fun while it lasts, but “while it lasts" is getting longer all the time thanks to the many updates Dan the Man is receiving. This is the holiday update for the game, and it adds a new side story map, the Frosty Plains. There are some new costumes to suit up in, new enemies to battle, and a new boss: the deadly, terrifying Roboclaus. He doesn’t care if you’ve been naughty or nice.

The Greedy Cave, $0.99 In the middle of all this holiday hub-bub, The Greedy Cave is getting another one of its usual updates. That means 20 floors of new monsters and bosses, along with a bunch of new Cave and Dreamworld armor sets to collect. No sign of a Santa hat or anything like that. Kind of eerie, don’t you think?

AB Classic, Free Holy smokes, Angry Birds is seven years old. There are fully-sentient, school-attending human beings who were born after this game came out. For them, the birds have always been ill-tempered, and birds vs. pigs is just the natural order of things. I hope we one day have a future where this kind of species on species violence isn’t accepted as the norm, but in the meantime, have 15 new levels of smashing that bacon! Plus, new stickers! I know you were all waiting for them.

Siralim 2 (Monster Taming RPG), $4.99 I’ve gone into detail on this one in a separate article, but if you missed that, here’s the skinny. Siralim 2 got its hefty first expansion, Trials of the Gods. It’s a free update, and it adds a whole lot of new content and systems. You can fight against the gods themselves for some awesome rewards, collect a new item to customize the appearance of your creatures, and both add and remove properties from Spell Gems. There are tons of new monsters and spells to go along with all of that. A tremendous update.

MARVEL Avengers Academy, Free Well, this is a little awkward. For its first big Christmas event, Avengers Academy is hosting an event built around A-Force, Marvel’s team of their top super-women. Which is awesome! Except their comic got canceled a month or two ago, which probably wasn’t expected when they got this whole ball rolling. Oh well. It’s not as though Marvel fans aren’t going to recognize the likes of Captain Marvel and She-Hulk with or without the team name, and comics fans are likely to be familiar with the new Thor, America Chavez, and Singularity as well. So far, it seems fair enough, but who really knows with these things until at least the halfway point.

Pokémon GO, Free This update is mostly about little quality of life tweaks to the user interface, but hey, we takes what we can gets. As of this update, you can easily transfer multiple Pokemon to the wood chip-, er, Professor Willow’s lab with a single action. Pokemon type icons have been added to the gyms so that you know exactly what you’re up against. You can also see your total candy count and total kilometers you’ve traveled with your buddy Pokemon by checking their information screen. And of course, we’re getting the big update within the next day or two with the Johto Pokemon. Excite!

Phoenix 2, Free This is one of those updates that is a little too big and detailed to go over in full here. The short version is that Phoenix 2 is now on its 2.0 version and that means new ships, new weapons, a new world, changes to the XP system, the addition of leagues, some new music, a whole ton of balance changes, and more. With changes this significant, there are sure to be some who are happy and others who are frustrated, but if nothing else, it shows that Firi isn’t content to rest on their laurels.

Rush Rally 2, $1.99 Stop, Brownmonster, just stop. The other iOS racing games are already dead. Ah well, let’s take another victory lap with this year’s best new racing game. This new update adds six new hill climbs with a whole new rally. The visuals have been improved and optimized, and the gameplay progression has been changed so that you unlock cars by winning rather than tracks. You can now race any track even if you are the worst driver ever. The Rallycross leaderboards have also been reset due to strong requests from the players.

Rick and Morty: Pocket Mortys, Free It’s winter update time for arguably everyone’s favorite Pokemon-like game based on a popular Adult Swim animated series. That translates out to 10 new Mortys, including Detective Morty and Badly Cloned Morty. Investment Rick has also been added to the game to help you make some returns on your cash. And of course, no update is complete with beautiful, gorgeous, fantastic bug fixes. Of which there are some. In this update. The bugs. They got fixed.

Crashlands, $6.99 Forget white magic, black magic, time magic, and summoning magic. The new hotness is juice magic, and you can try it out in Crashlands now thanks to the addition of Juicemancy. You can use this new magic system to modify your items with juice. Note that this does not work very well in real life. Your axe will not become axier if you dip it in orange juice. This update also includes some new items, gamepad support, and the ever-faithful bug fixes and UI improvements. I like juice so much that I’m going to reward this game with the coveted Update Mondays Most Spider-Mans of the Week award.

Battle Champs, Free Battle Champs always has new stuff to do, but not a lot of it rolls out in a discrete update, so there aren’t many chances to include it here. This update is a little bigger than usual, though, so here we go. There’s a new Giant boss available to fight, along with some new Champs to recruit. The winter version of the airship is here, and with it comes the chance to score some goodies from the trees and snowmen that are scattered around. A Grand Rumble tournament is coming, and many new features and adjustments have been implemented. It’s a good time to jump back in if you drifted away from it like I did.

Temple Run 2, Free I know, this Christmas what we really wanted was to see an actual Temple running in-game, but we’re going to have to make do with what we got, okay? Santa and Mrs. Claus are here, and they’re just as susceptible to horrific death as everyone else in this game, so don’t let them down. There are some special holiday challenges and rewards to collect, and some new Frozen and Holiday collectibles to get your hands on. Oh, and for Christmas Day? A free present for everyone! What is it, Imangi? Tell me! Tell me tell me tell me!

The Trail, Free It’s pretty weird, but it seems like there’s a game from one of Peter Molyneux’s studios that isn’t disappointing people? The last time that happened, Will Ferrell was still the funniest guy in America. Miracles abound, and this update is pretty nifty, too. You can now choose to move to another town or even found a new one if you want. There’s an IAP that lets you skip right to the town if that’s how you feel like spending your cash. Winter has come, and you can decorate your house appropriately or even dress as a snowman if you’re feeling super-weird. There are 16 new quests that come with new recipe rewards, and two more possible house levels for those who need a palatial estate. Lots of bug fixes, too.

Zen Pinball, Free The Bethesda set of pinball tables has arrived to Zen Pinball. If you’ve dreamed of a silverball version of Skyrim, Doom, or Fallout, congratulations on getting your really odd wish granted. As usual, you’ll have to buy these via IAP, but the prices are pretty fair as these things go. For what it’s worth, I’ve heard the Doom table is a bit of a letdown, but the other ones seem to have been received well. Hey, while they’re doing tables based on games, they should totally do a Zen Pinball table. Zen Pinball Pinball!

Shooty Skies, Free As you would expect from a Shooty Skies update, this latest version brings a bunch of new pilots to the fore. Eleven of them, to be specific. There’s also a new weapon, some hotly-requested ad removal options, and lots of performance and stability improvements. Now, get out there and shoot some skies! Or wait, the skies are shooty, so I guess they’re shooting? Shooting at you, maybe? Just.. just play the game or something, okay! In the manner described by the instructions held within!

Injustice: Gods Among Us, Free Just once, once mind you, I wish they would have an event based around the Legion of Super-Pets. During this event, they could rename the app Injustice: Dogs Among Us, and it would be the funniest thing, friends. But that wish isn’t going to come true. Instead, we have the decent consolation prize of Rebirth versions of some characters. This version also adds a new mechanic through which you can rank your characters up to Promoted 10 and get their maximum level up to 60. As usual, the game is also dishing out some nice rewards during the holiday season, so check in every day and reap the benefits.

Ninja Turtles: Legends, Free Okay, look, I know this is a silly card game that launched off the back of some very questionable movies, but I can’t help but be a tiny bit excited by this update. You see, they’ve added both the 1980s animated versions and the original comic book versions of the Turtles to the game. The 80s ones look a little odd rendered in 3D, but the original versions are done in black and white with red bandanas and heavy shading. They look great. I wish the game were better, but yeesh, this fanservice.

Aralon: Forge and Flame, $4.99 While it wasn’t quite the game the original was, I feel like the sequel to Aralon got more grief than it deserved. Absent the shadow cast by its predecessor, it’s a pretty fun game in a genre that seems to have almost completely dried up on iOS. This update improves the visuals and adds more content via a dimensional portal to the Netherworld. Feel like hacking up some demons? I mean, who doesn’t, right?

Marvel Contest of Champions, Free Well hey, can’t let DC have all the holiday fighting fun, can we? So, uh, this year’s holiday event follows Hyperion and Howard the Duck as they get into trouble in various ways. An odd couple, to be sure, but I could see it working. Besides the event, this new update brings expert daily quests, titles, a little nerf to Red Hulk, and some bug fixes. Years later, I still can’t believe Red Hulk is a thing. Testament to good writers carrying a really weird idea, I guess.

Mortal Kombat, Free There’s a new ladder to climb in Mortal Kombat X. Shao Kahn’s Tower is a 100-rung ladder where you can earn special talent points. Those points can be used to improve your entire roster of fighters through the new talent tree. Something to challenge the long-term players, to be sure. This update also sees the return of Freddy Krueger. Who could have seen that coming? He’ll be available through a challenge, but you can spend too much money to grab him now if you want. As with Injustice, log in during the holidays to get some nice goodies, and check out some of the new characters that have been added while you’re at it.

That about wraps it up for last week’s significant updates. I’m sure I’ve missed some, though, so please feel free to comment below and let everyone know if you think something should be mentioned. As usual, major updates will likely get their own news stories throughout this week, and I’ll be back next Monday to summarize and fill in the blanks. Have a great week!