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. They’re not all free-to-play games this week, I promise! Just, you know, mostly. That’s how it is. Still, there’s some real heavy-hitters in here, including some games I’m sure many of our readers are playing. 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!
Rules of Survival, Free Another week, another stack of additions to Rules of Survival. There’s probably too much to list here, but the highlights include national flags you can pick in the settings to represent your home country, the ability to lean left and right, chicken grenades, increased seating capacity for certain vehicles, and improvements to the Token Store that was added last time around. Come on, Knives Out. Are you even trying to keep up?
Knives Out, Free Oh, ha. I guess you are. Well then. So here’s a new version of Knives Out, one of the other PUBG “homages" from NetEase. You can now fight the modern way by making use of the new drones that have been added. Okay, they’re just for scouting, but hey. Also making the scene is a new sniper rifle, the SVD. It has shorter firing intervals which would probably make it deadly in the right hands. The lobby has been updated with a snow theme, and some adjustments have been made to the game’s balance. There are also some new theme sets, poses, and so on for customizing your character’s appearance.
Assoluto Racing, Free Sure, racing against ghosts is better than nothing as far as having human competition in racing games goes, but nothing beats live races where players can actually interact and react with each other. Assoluto Racing now offers just that, with real-time online multiplayer in the brand new Quick Race multiplayer mode. It’s just a one-on-one race, but it’s better than a lot of mobile racers offer, right? Assolutely.
Respawnables - Special Forces, Free Respawnables always has a good time with its events, and this month’s is no exception. It’s Carnival time, and that means everyone ought to be donning their masks and battling festively. There are two new fighters, the Brazilian Scrapper and the Brazilian Brawler, and new masks every week. New challenges each week, too. Sure, it’s all a little silly for a military-themed action game, but at least this game owns its goofiness.
Guns of Boom, Free ESPORTS! ESPORTS! ESPORTS! This update to Guns of Boom is mostly about the ESPORTS! A word that cannot be typed unless you use all caps and an exclamation point. Anyway, the big news here is the addition of a beta version of a new mode called Pro Play. It is an ESPORTS mode designed specifically for ESPORTS! By professional ESPORTS teams! What it amounts to is that all guns above level 22 have the same power level, and max health and armor are capped. I am too old to know what any of this means so I will just say the word again and hope I’m communicating properly. ESPORTS!
Doom & Destiny Advanced, $0.99 Sweet Odin’s Beard, a paid game! It has been so long. My eyes do not deceive me, I hope. Well, here it is, an update to a paid game that isn’t just fixing what various hardware/OS updates broke. Nay, friends. This one has a new Power-Up affinity level 16 for various job classes, some new passive powers for a few classes that needed a little boost, and the capacity for the arena to unlock perks up to level 75. This update also fixes some outstanding bugs.
Subway Surfers, Free You know, I’ve called the Subway Surfer kids out for their dangerous behavior in the past, but even I have to admit, they’re at least wise enough to know not to eat laundry detergent. Nope, instead they’ll just go surfing on the subway tracks in Chicago, which may seem dangerous but is, I’m informed, just plain rad. Surf through parks and museums on the new Hot Dog Board and unlock E.Z.’s new Touchdown outfit. Grab all those hidden gloves scattered on the tracks and you can win some Weekly Hunt prizes. Please do not eat them.
Angry Birds POP!, Free Birdle Bobble Snood Saga, er, Angry Birds POP! has a new update, and when it’s a free-to-play puzzle game that barely wallpapers over the thing it’s “paying homage" to, you know what that means: more levels! 40 new levels in this case, which is nothing to sneeze at. They’re still at the point where they’re giving these bundles of levels names. This one is called Arctic Eggs-pedition. There are apparently some special guest birds and some limited time events to check out, so I guess check those out. If you want. I’m not making anyone do it.
Rayman Adventures, Free I feel bad for Rayman sometimes. By now it’s clear he’s the Richie Cunningham to the Rabbids’ Fonzie. Don’t worry, Rayman! One day you’ll direct Apollo 13! And The Grinch, but we won’t talk about that. As for this update, as for this game, it’s a new marathon challenge in the Desert Kingdom. You can Golden Scarabs and check out the new characters and families. That’s Raysiris, Sandbox, the Anubii, and the Sphynxies for those writing these things down. Just don’t tell you-know-who that his old co-workers have been palling around with that Italian plumber, okay? Let him be proud of his little desert running thing.
Sonic Forces PvP Racing Battle, Free We’ve got, like, three Sonic Dash-style games on here now. Can we please have Sonic 3 or Sonic Mania? Please? Was Sonic Forces really popular enough that we had to have a completely new app instead of an event in one of the other behind-the-back Sonic running games? Okay, I’ll stop griping now. I just needed to fill out some words due to the fact that this update just adds Blaze the Cat to the game along with a couple of new items, and airing my grievances was a nice way to do that. Enjoy the cat lady.
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. If you’re looking for the coveted UMMSotW award this week, I’ve decided none of these updates deserved it and instead opted to give it to myself. You have to treat yourself sometimes, friends. 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!
