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 big games got updates this week, with some great Apple Arcade titles in particular seeing some love. We’ve got a mix of updates covering Apple Arcade, free-to-play, and paid games for you to consider. 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!
TEPPEN, Free Teppen always seems to have interesting events when they happen, and this latest one certainly qualifies. The Breath of Resistance card set is now available, adding a whole bunch of new cards to the game from a wide variety of series. There’s a 2.5 year anniversary campaign going on, which presumably has some rewards to offer. You can find new items in the Soul Shop, new quests added to the Chronicles mode, a new ranked match with Karin, and a new point match with Tessa.
Jetpack Joyride, Free Barry boldly goes where he has gone before with the return of the Star Trek crossover event in Jetpack Joyride. Collect a bunch of popular Star Trek characters, try to add a spiffy Starfleet Mech to your garage, and strap on the Starship jetpack to hit warp speed. There’s a new Voyager Shuttlecraft vehicle on offer, the Phaser and Borg Cube jetpacks to nab, some new vehicle skins, and naturally all of the appropriate backgrounds to sell the theme.
Pocket Build, $0.99 It’s been a bit since we checked in on Pocket Build, and I was pleased to see a nice new update waiting for us to dig into. It adds fish and bugs, including some very pretty butterflies, lending the game just a little more of a nature feel. Beyond that, there’s a new color filter to mess with, plus some fixes for issues with water transparency and missing items. This is such a lovely game for the little it asks for.
FANTASIAN, Our 2021 Apple Arcade Game of the Year has its first update in a few months, and while it’s not as monumental as some of its previous ones, it does add a feature I’m rather happy to see. If you fire up a New Game+ file and head to the bar in the Frontier Town of En, you’ll find a special treasure chest in the back room. Grab the item from the chest and save your game. A new option will be added to the main menu that allows you to listen to all of the music in the game. Mmm, Nobuo Uematsu tunes whenever you want. There are also some bug fixes in here, because why not? I’ll go ahead and give this the UMMSotW award this time, because I do dig this game’s soundtrack.
Zookeeper World, I think this game might be doing better than the developers planned, because it felt like the original design was maxed out a couple of updates ago. That puts us in an interesting place for updates for the next while. Sure, twenty-five new stages. That kind of thing is expected in a matching puzzle game update. A new animal for your zoo in the form of a gorilla. Well, yeah. It’s Zookeeper, after all. But we’ve also got a new minigame where you’re trying to toss as many free throws into the basket as possible within the time limit. Along with the previous minigame that aped the original game, this is part of the new Minigames Shop that will probably see more additions as time goes on. Odd, but okay.
Toy Blast, Free This update, on the other hand, is a lot more conventional. Such is the state of our obligatory free-to-play matching puzzle updates of the week most times. Toy Blast‘s latest version does what most new versions of the game do. It adds fifty new stages to play, and gives you a little story context for them. Apparently this one has to do with a heist being planned by Rhino and Mister. I don’t think that Rhino is Aleksei Sytsevich from the Spider-Man comics, but I’m not going to play this game long enough to find out. It would be pretty cool if it was him, though. Just thousands of stages into Toy Blast and, boom, Spider-Man tie-up. Alas, reality rarely is as fun as the world of imagination.
LEGO® Brawls, The vault has been thrown open! No human-made device can deign to imprison the previous events of LEGO Brawls! Every past season is now available for you to go back to and enjoy at your leisure. Choose your favorite theme, earn studs, unlock new pieces, then hop to another theme. There will still be some limited edition themes around the holidays, though. This update also brings in Player Ranks and makes some tweaks to the UI and controller support.
SpongeBob: Patty Pursuit, Here’s another popular Apple Arcade game that keeps on getting more added to it via updates. This latest version includes twenty-five more F.U.N Sized courses. More SpongeBob references! More unlockable hats to earn! Rack up the scores, gets your hands on some stars, and unlock more levels. You know how this goes by now, friends. This update also makes some balance adjustments and fixes a few bugs.
PAC-MAN Party Royale, It’s interesting which elements of Pac-Man have become iconic over time. Like fruits, for example. It’s probably the third or fourth thing you think of when it comes to Pac-Man, and the chief among them is probably the pair of cherries. Well, fruits are coming to the Pac-Man party and the cherries are leading the charge. Grab them and you’ll turn invisible for a few seconds. This update also includes eight new mazes, thirteen new dressing room items, and a few other tweaks and improvements.
Genshin Impact, Free We’ll finish things up this week by taking a look at the latest update to hit the, er, hit game Genshin Impact. Fleeting Colors in Flight is the name of this version and its associated event, and it brings in new characters named Shenhe and Yun Jin along with a new area and some new stories to play through. There’s also a new weapon called the Calamity Queller, some updates to the Dressing Room, and a couple of new monsters to battle.
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!
