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 have once again defied the fates and left out the obligatory free-to-play matching puzzle game update this week. Not obligatory now, are you? There is a good list of game updates here today to dig through while you get your Monday sorted out. 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!
Subway Surfers, Free The Subway Surfers have moved along to another location on their never-ending world tour. I miss pretending I could travel the way these kids do. Anyway, they’re in Marrakesh this time, seeing the lovely sights of Morocco. There’s a new surfer named Taha, and a brand new Camel board. It looks like a squatting camel and I love it and want to protect it. Aina has a new blue outfit you can get, and as usual there are plenty of rewards for those who dedicate themselves to the Daily Challenge and Coin Meter events.
FINAL FANTASY III, $12.99 The first three Final Fantasy Pixel Remaster games got updated this week, but don’t get too excited. Most of the updates involve some very specific bug fixes for each game. For example, the Final Fantasy III update fixes a bug involving Bard songs and an achievement failing to pop. It also makes it so that the recovery pot in Castle Hein will recover characters from KO status, which is nice. While the update notes didn’t mention anything about it, I think these updates also slightly improved the fonts by lightening the outline around the text, similar to how the font looks in Final Fantasy IV Pixel Remaster. It’s a small thing but I guess every little bit helps.
Assassin’s Creed Rebellion, Free Haha, I love the little chibi assassin designs in this game. Absolutely adorable. This update offers some new campaign content where you help Claudia Auditore da Firenze with a mission to assist her well-known brother Ezio with his latest target. By playing these campaign missions, you can collect DNA fragments for a number of heroes drawn from Assassin’s Creed II. At last, you can recruit chibi Leonardo da Vinci. Speaking of, you can craft his Legendary Dagger named Vibrant Palette. Neat. Bug fixes and performance improvements round things out, naturally.
Dead Cells, $8.99 I’m still rather amazed at how well Dead Cells made the transition to mobile. Playdigious really deserves a huge amount of credit for figuring out how to make the touch controls work so well. This update brings in some goodies for players who don’t want to pay, and even more goodies for those who do. For those that don’t mind laying down a little scratch, the Fatal Falls DLC is here. It’s $3.99 and it’s well-worth picking up for all the new stuff it has. But even if you don’t buy the DLC, you benefit from an update to Custom Mode, a new biome, new monsters, and new weapons. You just get a whole lot more of that stuff if you buy the expansion. This is an easy pick for the coveted UMMSotW award for this week.
Jumper Jon, There are so many games on Apple Arcade these days that I still sometimes stumble across games I totally forgot were on the service. Jumper Jon is one such game. But there’s nothing like a good update to remind you about a game, and this is a nice one. It adds a new arcade game mode that you can play with Jon and Jane. Play this mode and you’ll be able to free more souls, which sounds like a generally good thing to be doing. To try it, head to the Oneiric World and head to the fountain where you unlock memories. Enjoy!
Honkai Impact 3rd, Free Genshin Impact‘s older sibling is still rolling along even if it isn’t the world-beating success its kid brother is. The latest update adds new Battlesuit in the form of Miss Pink Elf, an S-rank Physical bow carrier. She’s available in the War Treasury for free. Weird, free stuff. Some new story is coming, with Chapter XXV Interlude debuting soon. There’s some new equipment to collect, and the Sanka Saga event is being rerun, giving you another chance to get the Hanafuda Oyabun outfit. Yes, that seems like a fine update.
Star Traders: Frontiers, $6.99 It feels like Star Traders: Frontiers is more or less in its refinement phase of life now. Well, I suppose the Trese Brothers are hard at work on finishing up Cyber Knights: Flashpoint, after all. I hope that one comes to mobile eventually, it looks hot. As for this update, it makes some improvements to the Trade Ban warning to make sure you notice it. This is important as you can lose Rep when illegal cargo is seized, so be careful. Some other tweaks have been made to balance out a few things, and some other UI adjustments and text improvements have been implemented.
Hearthstone, Free Speaking of old horses, Hearthstone is certainly showing its age. But the content keeps on coming as it must, and not even the significant troubles of the company behind it appears to be stopping that march. This update makes some balance changes to several modes, and prepares for the upcoming Mercenaries game mode that is set to launch on October 12th. Some pre-purchase bundle options have been added in anticipation of that if you feel like throwing more money at the game.
AFK Arena, Free AFK Arena‘s got a big new update, as it tends to. Seriously, this game has such a regular flow of new stuff I wonder if the team ever takes a day off. This update features a new Mauler hero, Granit – Desert’s Stone. The usual Bountiful Trials and test play business, of course. There is a new activity called Abyssal Aid that allows you to group up with your buds and share each other’s heroes to try to take down the Dismal Maze to get some extra rewards. There are some new adventures and stages to play, and a bunch of balance changes that actually make some parts of the game easier. That rarely happens. There’s more stuff in here, but time is money so I’ll let you check the additional details yourselves.
ANOTHER EDEN, Free This game often updates around the same time as AFK Arena, so I usually bring them here in pairs. And I’ve done it again! I cannot be stopped. I am… inevitable. Just as my stall tactics for padding out games with light update notes are… inevitable. This update adds Heroes of Bygone Days and the Engraved Oath, with an encounter with Victor (Another Style) and some returning encounters. That’s about it, so let’s wrap this up!
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!