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. There was something weird going on in the App Store the last few days that resulted in tons of old updates getting pushed out again. This made it very hard for me to do my usual process for putting this article together, so it’s a bit skimpy this time. Of course, you can keep an eye out for updates yourself using AppShopper or by participating in the TouchArcade forums. This weekly summary is just here to fill you in on the things you might have missed. Let’s dig in!
[youtube][https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GZazFfw_O7A/youtube]
Doug dug., Free Doug dug is free now. Kind of. Basically, you can dig to 500 meters without paying anything. If you want to go deeper than that, you can unlock the rest of the game for a one-time IAP. If you already bought the game, no worries. The game should remember that you already paid and send you on your merry way. This is just a chance for more people to fall in love with Doug and his digging adventure.
Sonny, Free Doug isn’t the only formerly-premium game hopping over to the free-to-play track this week, though. Sonny has now shifted to a free-to-play model with ad support. You can watch ads to double your rewards after each fight, or the revive once per battle. According to the developers, the game experience is the same as it was before should you choose to ignore those options, so I guess it’s not so bad.
Mikey Jumps, Free Don’t worry! Mikey Jumps didn’t convert to free-to-play. I mean, that’s because it already is free-to-play, but it’s the little things that count, right? Some cool new additions were made in this latest version of the game. Specifically, there’s a new endless mode. That’s right, if your skills are sufficiently good, you will literally never stop playing Mikey Jumps. You will die with your mobile device in your hand, and everyone will talk about how you played the game for 58 years non-stop because that endless mode was just as it advertised. Also, 75 new items to collect!
Space Marshals 2, $4.99 Perhaps you’re not looking for something endless, though. Perhaps you just want to extend the joy of playing rather than sup on it daily, for in doing so you ccould lose all sense of its unique flavor. Well, here you go. Space Marshals 2 has a new expansion pack for sale for the low price of $2.99. It’s called the Ava Mission Pack, and in an expression of its honesty in naming, the expansion follows Ava through her own set of missions. She plays differently, with more of a focus on crowd control and trickery. For whatever it’s worth, this game is the winner of the coveted UMMSotW award for this week.
Fallout Shelter, Free Thanksgiving is such a region-specific holiday that not many apps seem to get in on it anymore. Fallout Shelter has always done its own thing, though, so here we are. In the Thanksgiving event, you need to rescue the cook in some special quest lines in order to win some sweet rewards. You can also get some limited-time Thanksgiving decorations and outfits. But you’re supposed to beware of a dancing turkey? Who knows what that’s all about? Be careful, though. You might be willing to pardon the turkey, but will the turkey be willing to pardon you? Chilling thoughts.
Plague Inc., $0.99 Mmm, sure, why not? Whether or not you’ve played Plague Inc., you probably know about it. It’s one of the more successful paid games on the App Store, with a longevity that puts almost every game that isn’t Minecraft to shame. Part of the secret recipe is in its hefty, somewhat frequent updates, I’m sure. Anyway, this one has a new variant of the Mad Cow disease. If you’re young, you might not remember that. But the Coles Notes version is that a group of hyper-intelligent cows, furious at our treatment of their brethren, rose up and attempted to destroy us all using a virus that affected primates but not other mammals. It was another near-miss for humanity, but we made it. Can you find that scenario among the three news ones in this update? Probably not. There’s a reason we don’t talk about it.
Candy Crush Saga, Free Candy Crush Saga has so many levels now, the update notes don’t even bother mentioning the total. There are a lot. Now there are more. I think they avoid saying the number because while high numbers are impressive up to a certain point, if the number is too high it’s intimidating. People like to feel like they could conceivably beat a game, and if you see there are 2,000 levels or something like that, you might not even bother starting. Anyway, I like to toss a King game in here now and then just to keep everything all fat and healthy, you know? And there isn’t much to talk about in the actual update notes, so you get this kind of nonsense. Thanks for reading!
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!
