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. I’ve gathered up a bunch of games both familiar and lesser-seen in these articles to present a nice course for you to enjoy as you eat your delicious breakfast treats. Or lunch treats. Or dinner treats? Midnight snack? I don’t know where you live, sorry. Uh, getting back on track, we’re seeing an unusual amount of anniversary updates this time around. It’s almost like games tend to launch near the end of the year or something! 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!
Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp, Free Somehow, Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp is three years old. I bounced off of it quicker than I tend to with games in this series, but I can’t say they haven’t made a strong effort to add content to keep people engaged. One of the big-deal add-ons this time around is the AR mode, which allows you to thin the walls between our dimension and the Tom Nookiverse. Dangerous games, no doubt. This new version also expands the area at the campsite where you can put your stuff, giving you more customization options. The maximum inventory size for clothes and furniture has been increased, and a few tweaks have been made to the interface. I sometimes wonder how far this app is going to go in the long run. Will it eventually be akin to a regular Animal Crossing game? Probably not, but it’s sure hanging in there.
Jetpack Joyride, Free Another week, another returning event shuffled in for Jetpack Joyride. This time around it’s the Zappy Bird event making its way back to the game, and I’m certain I’ve written about this exact event before. Profit Bird plus lots of zappers equals something vaguely familiar in its tension, and the better you are at it the more rewards you’ll scoop up. Not too much to add to this, so I guess consider this the dinner bell if you missed this event the first time? It’s something to do, and that’s really what all of this nonsense is about in the end.
Merge Dragons!, Free I had to rewrite this paragraph because my flippant description of the basic loop of Merge Dragons was unintentionally quite dirty if you read it from even a slightly different angle. I can’t be bothered to come up with something witty to replace it, and that’s even assuming I could. So here’s the update: new events. A Thanksgiving event! Of course. And a Toy event, which seems a little early but hey, why not? Apparently you can get the Doll Dragon through the event, and that sounds cute. Anyway, I’ll try to be more careful the next time I write about this one.
Mario Kart Tour, Free There’s always some kind of event going on in Mario Kart Tour, which makes it useful when I’m having trouble finding games to fill out the list. The event this time around is a little different from usual, however. It’s a Mario vs Luigi event. You choose your team, get the appropriate character, and then go through the cup as usual. But within each race, every player will either be on Team Mario or Team Luigi. Using characters from your team will help you earn tokens that you can trade for goodies, and also earns points for the team. Whichever team wins will presumably get some nice rewards. Neat.
Homescapes, Free Time to check in on the Austinverse once again to see what’s going on in this, our obligatory free-to-play matching puzzle game update of the week. As you would probably expect, it’s holiday-themed. But! It is not Thanksgiving themed. No, Austin believes in going big or going home, and there’s nothing bigger when it comes to holiday updates than the Christmas event. Decorate the hall and grow a fir tree, which itself will need to be decorated. Renovate the workshop to make it suitable for Austin’s latest job-on-the-side, an official Santa’s Helper. Get at least half the job done, and it will be yours to keep. There are other goodies in here, but I’ll leave it to you to check out if you’re interested.
Rules of Survival, Free Animal Crossing isn’t the only game celebrating its third anniversary. Rules of Survival is doing it in style with a huge event. Take a spin on the Four Symbols Lucky Draw for a chance to win some highly limited skins. There’s a huge Top-Up Bonus in effect right now, along with other nice benefits for those buying Diamonds. Play during specific times and take down the Cruise Airship for some special anniversary goodies, or go on a treasure hunt in Ghillie Island for special coins. That’s not all that’s going on, so be sure to pop into the game and check out the celebrations yourself. This update also fixes a bunch of bugs, which is something you don’t need a special day to do.
PUBG MOBILE, Free Not to be outdone by its imitators, PUBG Mobile also has a cool new thing going on at the moment. It’s a crossover with Metro, the post-apocalyptic setting that has spawned so many cool games and other forms of media. There are new environments based on the property, some new gear, the Tikhar Rifle, new monsters from the series, and some new challenges. It goes pretty deep, actually. There’s a whole new mode with its own sub-systems, including a Black Market and some new rules for loadout inventory. If you love the Metro series, you won’t want to miss out on this collaboration. It’s seriously full-butt in a way many collaborations are not. I’m giving it the coveted UMMSotW award for this week in honor of its effort.
WHAT THE GOLF?, When I wrote the title up there in the first draft, I didn’t check the exact titles beforehand. I chose to write the title of What the Golf? with an interrobang and I was a little disappointed to see that it only uses a question mark. It really feels like an interrobang kind of game. Oh well. Anyway, the latest update brings the white stuff. Snow. Wet gold. Northwest Ontario tea. It also brings pizza, because pizza goes with everything, even snow. A moose! Wow, it’s like I’m in The Pas. Round it all out with some bug fixes and UI tweaks, and you’ve got a lovely little update.
WWE SuperCard - Battle Cards, Free You know, I kind of love that something as absurd as rendering the spectacle and over-the-top action of pro wrestling in a card game format has been so successful. Here we are at Season 7 of WWE SuperCard, bringing hundreds of new cards across three tiers, some new SuperMoves and Techniques, and a whole lot more. The console WWE games only wish they could keep things together as well as this game does, and that is kind of sad. Oh well, at least one part of the audience is being properly served, yes? Yes.
Hungry Shark World, Free Third anniversaries? Pathetic! How about a tenth anniversary! Okay, it’s not Hungry Shark World‘s tenth anniversary, but it is Hungry Shark‘s tenth anniversary, and that is close enough for our purposes. A new shark is here to celebrate. It’s named Mecha Sharkjira and if you need anything more than that name to get excited, I don’t know what is wrong with your neurotransmitters, pal. There are also new Shark Quests which you’ll coincidentally have to complete to earn the new shark. This update also plants the seeds for future events. Nifty.
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!
