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. Some new faces and old friends are here this time around, along with a number of the usual suspects. A nice blend all-around today, I’d say. 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 go for it!
High Rise - A Puzzle Cityscape, Free Sometimes I include an update just because I want to talk about the game, and yeah, I want to talk about High Rise. I haven’t been this hooked on a mobile game since Threes!. If you haven’t given this a try yet, make sure you do. This latest update changes the upcoming block preview, hopefully making it clearer which blocks you can expect to see. A few other little tweaks, but nothing that big. Just… play the game. Unless you’re colorblind, in which case you should probably wait until the developer improves things in that regard.
Phoenix 2, Free Wow, this is a huge update for the excellent shoot-em-up Phoenix 2. Three new ships are available: Jeria, Centurion, and Stinger. There are new Apex abilities for the Personal Shield and Goliath Missile as well. The Focus Lance has had its damage increased, and the Goliath Missile also gets a boost to its impact and blast damage. The Ion Cannon has been altered to make it more useful against groups of smaller enemies while requiring a little more skill to use against larger ones. The Neni’s main weapon gets a boost to the firing rate of its main weapon. Good stuff all around.
The Quest, $7.99 Usually when The Quest updates, it’s because there’s a new expansion out. Sure enough, that’s the case here. Mithril Horde was one of the later releases for the classic version of The Quest, and it’s now available in the modern app. Buy the expansion separately for $2.99 and you can either enjoy it on its own or activate it within this game and play it here. A few other bug fixes and text adjustments have been made, but the main event is that expansion content. It’s aimed at a level 21-ish character, so make sure you bulk up before heading out.
Inferno 2, $2.99 I don’t know about all of you, but I make little folders on my phone for all of my favorite developers. One of those folders was in dire shape after my recent hardware upgrade, though: Radiangames. And that made me really sad, friends. But this last week has made me a happy boy, as almost all of the games Radiangames released on mobile have been updated. Better iOS13 controller support, and proper compatibility with iPhone X family displays. I picked Inferno 2 here because it’s one of my favorites, but go on and look up Radiangames on the App Store to find a whole lot of freshly-updated treasures.
MARVEL Future Fight, Free Oh wow, this update is so much my thing that I don’t know how it could be any more my thing. This is a Guardians of the Galaxy-themed update, but since most of the famous Guardians were added to the game ages ago, this is really just a solid Cosmic Marvel update. There’s a new Epic Quest with Beta Ray Bill up for grabs, for starters. Who doesn’t love Beta Ray Bill? Other new playable characters include Rich Rider Nova, Gladiator, Phyla-Vell, and… DARKHAWK. Aw yeah, my inner teen Shaun is squealing with joy. Stupid Star-Lord gets a new uniform, and so does Punisher. Wait, I thought this was a Cosmic update? Oh right, that new uniform for Frank is none other than Cosmic Ghost Rider. Just take the coveted UMMSotW award already, you beautiful fools.
Subway Surfers, Free Wasn’t this game updated just last week? Maybe I’m misremembering. Oh well, it’s here again. This time the kids are off to Amsterdam, and I suspect they won’t be sampling any of the special brownies. The new Season Hunt feature gives you a chance to unlock Mei and the Leaf Board, while new Surfer Jolien and her Spring Outfit are also up for grabs. Along with the usual event stuff, this update also improves the UI and adds a whole bunch of new languages.
Rules of Survival, Free This update is a bit complicated so I’m not going to go into a ton of detail here, sorry. But basically, as a result of the global pandemic, the developers are making tons of concessions for players who can’t regularly log in and play. That includes unlocking rewards at earlier levels, giving players extra time to complete certain content, and even setting up an extra EXP event for whenever things get relatively back to normal. For those who have managed to keep up, there’s a new season available complete with new missions and rewards.
Homescapes, Free There’s a snake in Austin’s boot! Well, not really. But this update for Homescapes does have a Wild West event where Steven and Lucy have to build a cowboy town. As you do. Collect all of the unique decorations and you can get a cowboy statue, which is definitely something everyone wants in their yard. In other events, William is recreating his first date with Olivia by renovating a jazz club terrace. In terms of puzzle mechanics, the new compasses need to have matches made on their active side to remove them. Plenty to keep players busy until the next update, to be sure.
Pocket Build, $0.99 Hey, Pocket Build had another update. Wow, it’s a really big one too. So big that it is, in fact, the biggest update of this year so far. There are more than one hundred new items in here, including new props, buildings, and characters. There are also some performance improvements and the all-important bug-squishery. Seems like as good a reason as any to dive back into the game, or just keep on playing if you haven’t stopped. That’s all you can really hope for from any update.
Harry Potter: Hogwarts Mystery, Free You know what’s weird? I’ve seen every Harry Potter movie except the second one. I’m not a Harry Potter fan but I ended up going with friends or family to all of them except that one. So I don’t know that much about Dobby except, you know, what happened to Dobby in the end. But I guess in this update you can befriend Dobby, as the Malfoys have arrived at Hogwarts. How nice. Apparently there are some new spring items available in the store. Other than that, it just seems to be some fixes here and there.
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.
