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. A little bit here and a little bit there this week, with some solid Apple Arcade game updates and a handful of free-to-play regulars in the mix. A nice light spread to get your week started, if I do say so myself. 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!
MARVEL SNAP, Free Marvel Snap rolled into its newest season last week, and with no new movies to draw on it has instead gone to one of the most popular X-Men plot devices in the history of the team: The Phoenix. Rise of the Phoenix adds a number of X-Men and Phoenix-related characters to the assortment of cards, along with plenty of variants and a couple of new locations. There should be more big changes coming later this week, but we’ll have to wait and see what gets announced.
Peglin, Free Mikhail already covered this in significant detail, so I’m just going to gloss over things quickly here. It’s a big update called the Spinventor, adding a bunch of new orbs and relics to the game. New mechanics are in play, plus squashes some bugs that were affecting some players. A cute game, and if it keeps getting updates like this it will probably continue to please its players.
Genshin Impact, Free Ah, the kids will be happy. Genshin Impact update time. And hey, it’s summer time so why not get into the mood of the season? The Secret Summer Paradise update adds a new limited-time area, a couple of new events, and some new outfits. Klee gets the Blossoming Starlight outfit, while Kaeya gets the Sailwind Shadow. This update also has some new things for the Genius Invokation TCG, if that’s something that has hooked you in.
TEPPEN, Free Teppen has a new update, as it sometimes does. And as it usually goes, this brings in some stuff from a popular Capcom game series. The lucky winner this time around is Mega Man Battle Network, with the new card set 30_MINUTES.EXE. New Hero Skins, new elements in Adventure, new Soul Shop items, new Chronicles Quests, a new Ranked Match named Lan Hikari & MegaMan.EXE, and a new Point Match called CyberBoss M. Bison Virus. Neat. I am enjoying this Mega Man Battle Network revival of late. Keep ’em coming, and maybe do Legends next.
The King of Fighters ALLSTAR, Free I imagine the shape of this update won’t be too different from previous ones for this game, but let’s have a look in the box and see what pops out. Yes, here we are. Two new Swimsuit EX Fighters have been added, Glimmering Ocean Kasumi and Glimmering Ocean Jenet. Well, summer. There are also a number of events in this new update, including the Summer Festival Event, Vacation Gift Event, and more. Can I just say the lack of hyphen in the title between All and Star continues to bother me more deeply than it really should? I know it’s just a hyphen, but like… I don’t know. Let’s move along.
Cut the Rope Remastered, Ropes are getting cut, deal with it. The small creature desires his candy. We protect that smile around here. We also respect this game’s new update, which is distinctly pirate-flavored. It features a new pirate board with some new levels to play and rewards to go with them. Apparently there is also a postcard that has more levels? That all sounds lovely. Let’s cut that rope and feed the small creature. What harm could possibly come from it? Surely it will not grow up to become some sort of eldritch abomination that devours us all? Right.
WHAT THE CAR?, What the Car? What? I want this series to run a long time and use all kinds of weird nouns. Anyway, this is another summer-themed update. There are a bunch of new levels to play, and as some added fun for your break there are also some improvements and bug fixes. I won’t list them all here, but feel free to check the notes in the App Store yourself if you want the line-by-line. Just know that it should make for a better play experience overall. What the Update? That doesn’t work at all. Oh well.
SpongeBob SolitairePants, This is apparently the biggest update for the game so far. That’s lovely, isn’t it? People just going full-bore on these things leading into the summer holidays. I hope the developers can take a nice break too. Anyway, there are now 250 Quest levels to play, 11 new decks, a new achievement, and more. I’m counting this as the obligatory free-to-play matching puzzle game update for the week, despite it being basically none of those things. That ol’ Shaun, flexing his tyranny yet again.
Castle Crumble, Or you could count this game, I guess. It also doesn’t really fit. But just like how in math where multiplying two negatives gives you a positive, here in this article adding two games that don’t fit the criteria actually allows me to check it off in my list. That’s just how it works. At any rate, you get sixty new levels to play here complete with a new mechanic in the form of the Mischievous Mages. A Zoom feature has been added along with a Landscape view, plus some bug fixes have been implemented. Great stuff.
The Oregon Trail, Heck, I’m at the end and I didn’t give out the award. I guess that means The Oregon Trail is our lucky winner of the coveted UMMSotW this week. I sure hope it deserves it. Oh, there are updated Contracts. You can now unlock Contracts that previously only appeared in the daily cycle. Cool. There are also new Elite Contracts in case you need a higher challenge, and something about Bounties? Alright, alright. You also get bug fixes, UI improvements, and some new achievements. Yes, I’m feeling good about that award. Let’s wrap things 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!
