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 are no two ways about it, friends: things have slowed down noticeably of late. For obvious reasons. A lot of the big updates hitting now were obviously planned and possibly completed a while ago. At any rate, I’ve grabbed an assortment covering a variety of games for you to consider over your Monday coffee break. 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 go for it!
Dr. Mario World, Free Yeah, Dr. Mario World isn’t exactly the most thrilling of games. Great music, at least. But I’m featuring it here for one reason, and one reason alone: Dr. Goomba Tower. There are two new doctors in the latest version of the game, and one of them is the rather plain Dr. Lakitu. But the other one is three Goombas standing on each other wearing a doctor’s coat, and if that’s not enough to get you into the top slot of Best iPhone Game Updates, I sure as heck don’t know what is. Dr. Goomba Tower, I salute you.
Aralon: Sword and Shadow, Free The usual disclaimer with GameClub stuff: I write history articles for their hub app, and they give me money for that. But I don’t include games in these round-ups that I wouldn’t have included anyway, and Aralon: Sword and Shadow definitely qualifies. I’ve written about this game in an RPG Reload, and it was our second RPG Reload Play-Along. This update not only gets the game working on modern devices, but also improves the visuals by removing caps that had previously been imposed but are no longer necessary. The game has aged a bit, but it’s still quite a bit of fun.
MARVEL Future Fight, Free Well, this is awkward, isn’t it? Pretty much every movie has been delayed thanks to COVID-19. Black Widow was supposed to be releasing right about now, but it has for now been punted to November. But updates are prepared and scheduled way ahead of time, so here we are. The Black Widow Legendary Battle has been added, which is apparently inspired by the movie. Two new characters, Yelena Belova and Red Guardian, have been added, and movie-themed costumes for Black Widow, Yelena Belova, Red Guardian, and Taskmaster are available. I’m going to give this game the coveted UMMSotW award for this week, mostly out of pity.
Star Traders: Frontiers, $6.99 We can always count on Star Traders: Frontiers for nice, regular updates. The latest version offers a new starting ship, the 2400M Reach Vindex. It’s $200K, and is a Minimalist Scout Starter. You can access Reach Vindex with the Salvage Contractor unlock. Aside from that, there are a few balance adjustments and UI tweaks, the sort of thing we tend to expect in Trese Brothers updates. There are also some bug fixes, because you can’t have a fresh update without some good old bug fixes.
FINAL FANTASY BRAVE EXVIUS, Free Well, here’s a game I don’t tend to include all that often. I stopped playing it ages ago, and it can be hard to make much of the update notes if you’re not actively involved in the game. I’ll give it a shot, though. The latest update involves a new content drop called Dark Visions: The Advent of Chaos. Oh, that Chaos. What a rascal he is. All… seeking time compression and loops and such. I’m sure he’s up to no good again. This new version also squashes a major bug with Ang and makes some slight tweaks to the UI. Yeah, not bad.
Disney Heroes: Battle Mode, Free Speaking of updates that were almost certainly supposed to coincide with movies that have now been delayed, here’s the newest version of Disney Heroes. It has two new characters: Mulan and Li Shang from Disney’s Mulan. These are the animated versions, so it’s not quite the ill-timed situation that Marvel Future Fight has run into, but it’s clear that this was somewhat timed to the release of the new live-action Mulan that was supposed to hit a few weeks back. Alas, no Yao. Well, I’m sure he’ll come in a future update.
ANOTHER EDEN, Free Another Eden keeps the content rolling, and this week’s update has a good chunk of stuff to enjoy. First up, new main story content. Part two, volume two, to be exact. Coming along with that are some new encounters. There’s a new character, Kikyo, and a new encounter with Nikeh (Another Style). Like with the last few updates, some Fateful Encounters are also available. A new straw dummy cultivation system has been added, and some bugs and writing errors were fixed. That’s about the lot of it.
Mario Kart Tour, Free The global pandemic hasn’t just affected movie plans, of course. Between rumors and some curious updates, one gets the sense that Nintendo had planned on some kind of big coordinated Mario event for the character’s upcoming 35th anniversary, plans that have seemingly now been disrupted and broken out into individual releases. There was a huge update for Super Mario Maker 2 on the Switch that has oddly been announced as its final major one, and now we’ve got a Mario Kart Tour update that ties in with Mario Maker but seems to have little in the way of cross-promotion. Oh well. You can get Hard Hat Mario and some other characters, karts, and gliders in the new tour while we wait for more news.
Rules of Survival, Free Look, I didn’t want to lean too hard into Marvel or Disney stuff this week, but updates are certainly sparser than usual at the moment. Thus, we have the odd case of including an update that is almost as much about cutting content as adding it. So let’s rip off that Band-Aid first. The April Fools Trick Roulette event has ended, and all of the stuff associated with it has finished up. But there is a new hero named Outlaw that you can use for free for the next few days, and you’ll have a chance to earn him for free in the Springtime Event. Season 12’s end has been pushed back to April 28th in consideration of how many players have been able to log in of late.
Toy Blast, Free We’ll finish up with the obligatory free-to-play matching puzzle update for the week, and this time it’s Toy Blast in the spotlight. There are, naturally, 50 new levels to play. A few people are thirsty for them, but most will never see them. Such a weird state of affairs in this particular genre. The update notes seem to want to tie these new levels to delivery cakes? Well, it’s topical at least. I certainly would not say no to a delivery cake right now, even if it was delivered by frightening living toys. Wait, do toys have digestive systems? Uhhh… I did it again, sorry.
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!
