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. It’s a nice mix of popular free-to-play games and some cool paid titles this time around, so hopefully everyone can find at least one game in the mix that they enjoy. Some favorites of mine made the cut this time around, and that’s always nice to see. Of course, you can keep an eye out for updates yourself 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!
Candy Crush Saga, Free Let’s get this out of the way immediately this week. For this article’s obligatory free-to-play matching puzzle game update, we’re going back to the classics. Yes, Candy Crush Saga is still going with no signs of slowing down. What has slowed down is the level of detail in its update notes. Very little to go on here, without even so much as a mention of how many new levels are on offer. It does mention that there are new levels, at least. And I suppose after all this time, that’s really all anyone still playing the game at this point cares about.
Dan The Man Platformer, Free Wow, Dan the Man‘s new icon is pretty hardcore. He’s about to gun some fools down, and he doesn’t care who knows. This update brings a huge, highly-requested feature to the game. You can now play the game in a multiplayer co-op mode where you team up with another player online to take on hordes of enemies. Aside from that, this new version also makes some changes to the Story Mode levels and fixes a few outstanding bugs. Grab a buddy and get blasting!
AFK Arena, Free Here we go with the latest version of AFK Arena, and as usual it’s stuffed full enough that I can’t really cover every detail. Leading the charge is the new Lightbearer hero, Walker: The Lone Ranger. You can test play the new character, with a Bountiful Trials event available. Some new adventures and challenges have been added to the game, and some fixes and optimizations round things out. I wonder if that new hero’s name is okay? I’m sure it is, but still. Heigh-ho Silver, away?
Jetpack Joyride, Free Barry Steakfries sure dips his feet into a lot of cross-promotional pools these days. The latest tie-in event is with Star Trek, giving you a limited amount of time to try to collect some Trek-related goodies. A Starship jetpack, Starfleet Mech, some new backgrounds and skins, and the Phaser and Borg Cube jetpacks are all available depending on your commitment and wallet size. Well, we’ve seen stranger mash-ups in this game. I wonder what will be next?
Among Us!, Free The hit game Among Us! got a few new additions last week, giving a little extra spice to the action. Tired of the usual character colors? Dig this: Tan, Gray, Banana, Rose, Maroon, and Coral are now available. There’s a new kill screen meeting menu that shows who died between rounds, and a new horn honk feature for The Airship. Other than that, there are some UI adjustments and bug fixes to help everything run as smoothly as possible. Nothing sus about that kind of update!
Easy Come Easy Golf, The previous update for Clap Hanz Golf added a lot of new content and some exciting features. This update? Not so thrilling. The shot controls and input results interface have been changed, along with the shot-input registration and trajectory. The score will now be displayed after you hole out, and some localization improvements have been made. As with many others in this list, some bug fixes and other optimizations have been implemented. Feels like a maintenance update more than anything, but I’ll take any chance to call attention to this highly enjoyable Apple Arcade game.
Brawlhalla, Free The roster of Ubisoft’s Brawlhalla expands with some extra star power in this new version. All four of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles are now in the game, helping keep 1980s surfer lingo alive for just a little bit longer. The new Crew Battle mode sees you pitting your team against others to see whose is the strongest. Finally, this update puts some pieces in place for the upcoming Ranked Season 21, scheduled to kick off on July 14th. Sure, I’m cool with the Turtles appearing in pretty much anything.
PicoPico - 8bit Retro Games, Free You know if PicoPico is here, there are some new retro games available in this subscription service. The Famicom RPGs Glory of Heracles and Glory of Heracles II have been added along with the action-RPG A.R.A.M.O. for the MSX. All of these games are in Japanese and are somewhat text-heavy, unfortunately. Well, at least you can tinker around with them a bit at no real cost. Truly an eclectic library of software, if nothing else.
Blackmoor 2, Free Speaking of games I like to fire up every now and then, Blackmoor 2 got a nice new content drop of its own this week. Dubbed the Villains update, it adds more than six new playable baddies through the character select menu. If you own the Premium Upgrade, you’ll also have access to Minion and Angel. That common refrain for today applies: bug fixes, optimizations, tweaks, performance enhancements, and so on. It’s always fun trying out new characters in this game, so getting a bunch of new ones at once? Yes, I’ll have some of that.
Horizon Chase, Free One of my favorite arcade-style racers on mobile platforms has another expansion available to purchase. The Walker-X Expansion Pack is a street racing-themed add-on pack that you can pick up for the very reasonable price of a buck or two, depending on when you’re reading this. It gives you a cool new car to drive, four extra unlockable skins, and eight remixed races based on the main campaign. I love this game a lot and it’s cool that this expansion gives me even more reasons to race, so that’s our coveted UMMSotW award for this article.
Genshin Impact, Free We’ll finish things up with a look at Genshin Impact‘s latest goodies. Version 1.6, Midsummer Island Adventure, is now available and it has some nice stuff in it. There’s a new character, Kaedahara Kazuha (Anemo), for starters. A new summer-themed event is waiting for you, along with some new updates to the Serenitea Pot and Dressing Room features. There’s a new quest to complete titled Autumn Winds, Scarlet Leaves, and a new sword named Freedom-Sworn. You can use it to take down the the game’s newest monster, Maguu Kenki. I know some players will whip through all of this quite quickly, but any new content is welcome as far as I’m concerned.
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!
