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 went looking around some odd corners for this week’s article, so we aren’t looking at the same old stuff. I mean, there are a few of the regulars in here, but the balance is a bit better than usual. 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!
Mario Kart Tour, Free Mario Kart Tour: it’s a guilty pleasure of mine. Yeah, I know I can play Mario Kart 8 Deluxe on my Switch and not deal with all of the cruft, but what can I say? I like watching those stars go up and those goodies unlock. Plus, Lederhosen Luigi. Anyway, the latest update adds in some new features and prepares for a couple more. The Kart Pro event will see you trying to rack up consecutive multiplayer wins, which is… well, good luck with that. There’s also a new system on the way that will give you rewards depending on the totals of your highest scores across all cups in a tour. Right here and now? Those playing in landscape mode can take advantage of new controls that put steering on the right and item controls on the left. There are also some new photo filters for auto mode.
MARVEL Realm of Champions, Free A big update for the relatively recently-released Realm of Champions. There are some new weapons for Iron Legionnaire and Storm, a new Grave of the Celestial event where you can score some celestial weapon variants, new PvE World Quests, leaderboards, alliance events, and the brand-new Gear Shard system. They’re a new type of currency that allows you to target the gear you want and hopefully avoid piling up junk that you don’t. There are lots of ways to earn Gear Shards, and when you’ve gathered enough you can trade them for a crystal that guarantees an item of a specific rarity. Seems useful, but I wonder how easy they are to gather up?
Toon Blast, Free I’m not getting very creative with this week’s obligatory free-to-play matching puzzle game update. What can I say, I’m short on time. So we look in on Toon Blast, which has its typical update with fifty new levels to play. The back story, if you’re interested in it, involves the Lantern Festival. Toon Blast doesn’t often directly address holidays, so seeing a vaguely Lunar New Year-themed update is somewhat interesting. I mean, if we simply must find something interesting in an update for this game. Which we do not, I suppose. Oh well, I tried. Let’s move along.
Subway Surfers, Free The kids have been there a few times before, but it’s always nice to take a return trip to Berlin. That’s just what the Subway Surfers are up to in this update, surfing through the concrete jungle and collecting tokens to earn some goodies. A new character joins the line-up on this trip. His name is Zayn, and he’s quite the cool fellow. Well, you basically know how this goes. New boards, new characters, lots of running and running again to gather up the necessary things to have a chance at them. It’s a way to kill time, should that be your aim.
Bloons TD 6, $6.99 I’m always forgetting to check in on Bloons TD 6, which is a mistake because it actually does update semi-regularly. Well hey, I remembered this time. The centerpiece of this latest version is a brand new expert map known as the Ravine. You can probably guess what its theme is. Besides that, there are seven new Trophy Store items, some UI improvements, and of course the ever-common balance adjustments and bug fixes. At this point of the game’s life, a new map is probably plenty to keep its dedicated players happy for a while.
Tetris®, Free Free-to-play Tetris fascinates me. See, the thing about Tetris is that you can grab a version of the game from pretty early on in its life and most fans would be content to play that game forever. Seriously, I can still fire up Game Boy Tetris and play it for hours on end. So how do you translate that to an on-going service game? How do you get people to keep spending when the base game has all you could ever need? Beats me, friends. But NThreeTWork’s idea seems to be to add items that you collect. Gotta catch ’em all? Custom avatar frames and backgrounds, to be specific. And you can show them off to other players, which I guess is why you want them? Throw in some seasonal content (Valentine’s, in this case) and Bob’s your uncle. There are some bug fixes too, of course.
Real Racing 3, Free Electric cars. It’s kind of neat to think that when this game first launched, putting an electric car in a racing game would have just been a novelty. Now? It just makes sense. And that’s the focus of this particular update. New cars include the Volkswagon ID.R, the Porsche Taycan Turbo S, and the Audi e-tron GT Concept. You can earn them all in some special events currently running, but I doubt it will be easy. There are some new Time Trial Competitions that let you take a couple of fancy cars for a spin, and some new Exclusive Series for those who can fully upgrade their McLaren 765LT and Lamborghini Essenza SVC12. All this and more await in the latest version of Real Racing 3, and as I don’t feel particularly strongly about anything else I’ll give this game the coveted UMMSotW for the week.
Crossy Road Castle, Now to take a peek at the Apple Arcade offerings to see what treasures await us. And hey, it’s a new version of Crossy Road Castle. It’s a hefty one, adding the new tower named The Great Treehouse. You can look forward to new levels, fresh challenges, brand new characters, some spiffy hats, and plenty of secrets. You can’t have a Crossy game without lots of weird secrets to uncover, after all. I don’t think this game has quite captured the same amount of awareness as the original game did, but it shares much of its appeal and I’m glad to see it keeps getting new content to fill it out.
LEGO® Brawls, And here’s another Apple Arcade game update. LEGO Brawls is on a pretty regular update schedule, so the main point of interest is in what each update is focused on. This time, it’s Ninjago, which has somehow become 10 years old while no one was looking. Hm. Anyway, this season is all about celebrating that milestone, with special solid gold versions of many of the Ninjago heroes up for grabs. There are six new emotes that may or may not be related to Ninjago, and a revamped Ninjago level with a new layout and some fresh decor. Some improvements have been made to the audio side of things, and some adjustments and fixes have been implemented.
King Rabbit - Puzzle, Free The last game for this week is King Rabbit, the rather enjoyable puzzler that keeps on giving. This update isn’t the most impressive of things when described in words, but I think in practice you’ll find it favorable. Basically, there are a whole bunch more rabbits in the game. Even better, you might now encounter rabbits that only cost 100 gems. A cheaper way to fill out your collection, no doubt. There are some bug fixes in here as well, but those aren’t as cool as new rabbits so I’m not going to build a monument to their glory even if they probably deserve one.
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!
