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. Twas the week before Christmas and all through the App Store, many games were donning festive regalia and more. Shaun running late tries to search at his best, running behind because he was playing Dragon Quest. Okay, that’s as much as I can do. Here are some updates for you to enjoy. 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!
Jetpack Joyride, Free
I am covering both Jetpack Joyride games today because they both have their own Christmas updates. I think that is neat. The Christmas Event in this one sees you collecting flying Christmas baubles to unlock Lady Yuletide, a Christmas Hog (bike not pig sadly), and the Pile O’ Gifts. Naturally the halls are all decked with, you know, boughs of holly and such. Christmas-like things. Festive enjoyment for all!
Jetpack Joyride 2,
And now we look at the latest update for the sequel which, as you might expect, also has a lot to do with the holiday. Well, really just one main thing: a merry Santa skin for Barry to wear-y. Yes, I just did that. Deal with it. You also get a new Pompom jetpack that blows bubbles, a sticker album you can fill by collecting marbles, and a bunch of bug fixes and other improvements. Festive enjoyment for Apple Arcade subscribers!
SP!NG,
I’m not going to do my usual extremely funny and charming thing of making a gag out of the punctuation in the game’s title. Instead I am simply going to encourage you, if you have Apple Arcade, to give this game an earnest go. It really is quite fun. This new update adds a theme inspired by SMG Studio’s now-gone Apple Arcade game No Way Home, eighteen new Lost Levels to play, and a new One Life mode where you get one chance to see how far you can get. All very lovely stuff, and I’m going to give this game the coveted UMMSotW award for this week as a result.
HEROish,
I haven’t covered this one before here because frankly I find its non-committal title to be a turn-off. Are you hero or are you not hero? Hero-ish? What are you, Darkhawk? Yeesh. But some people like it so I will kindly put it here for those folks. There are new cards for all three factions in multiplayer, which should add some extra spice to the game. Existing cards have seen some changes that should allow for better and/or more interesting deck synergies, and multiplayer mode is now cross-platform. There are various other bits in here, but that’s the update summaryish from me.
The Oregon Trail,
The Oregon Trail? That’s old news, pal. Like, fifty-year-old news. The new hotness is The Chisholm Trail, which takes you on a post-Civil War journey of three cowboys bringing their cattle along the Chisholm Trail. With this new update, you can explore this new trail and enjoy various other cowboy-related additions to the game. There’s also a new Cook character class that can rustle up some chow for you. A very big update for this game, and one well-worth diving into.
Goat Simulator+,
See, the nice thing about the Apple Arcade Goat Simulator+ is that the developers have a bunch of fun expansions they can just deploy over the course of time to keep people playing. This time, the MMO expansion has been added. Choose one of five different classes and complete a whole bunch of goofy quests to reach level one hundred or something. More ridiculous fun, provided you haven’t already played the wheels off it. But even if you have, Goat Simulator always seems to find funny new ways to break.
Subway Surfers Tag,
I don’t know, this one still seems to be trying to find its feet from where I am sitting. This new update adds some new things and changes some things around, and we’ll have to see if it’s enough to spark joy. The Guard’s companion, Dog, now roams around as an enemy in all the Arenas. Defeat Dog and you’ll get Outfit parts, which eventually can be put together into Outfits, and we all like those. They hide our shame. Enemies will now appear in waves, and if you can beat a wave before the next one pops you’ll get some extra points. Also, Batteries are out, Health is in. You get three lives per run, and you can restore some Health by defeating certain enemies. Give it another shot and see how you take to it, I suppose.
Disney Magic Kingdoms, Free
You know, I honestly expected more Christmas-themed updates this week. Like, especially for things like Disney-related games. But no, here we are with a Hunchback of Notre Dame event in Magic Kingdoms, with Clopin’s Puppet Wagon, the Bells of Notre Dame, the Festival Cap and Bells Stand, the Festival Scepter Stand, and the Hunchback of Notre Dame Parade Float joining the game. Dive into this event and enjoy that one time where Disney kind of went a little too far for parents’ comfort by having the bad guy sing about how lusty he was. Hey, I always liked this movie, even if no one else did.
Injustice 2, Free
There was a Batman story I read as a kid where Gordon encourages Batman to take a night off on Christmas and he’s worried to do so because, well, crime. But somehow he has a great night hanging with Gordon and through the magic of Christmas all of the crimes stop or solve themselves. That always stuck with me, and that is how I came to associate Batman with Christmas. Weird. This update adds Robin King from the DC Dark Metal comics. He’s pretty evil. There’s also a Winter Holiday login event where you can get some goodies, and a bunch of bug fixes.
Marvel Contest of Champions, Free
Contest of Champions is somehow eight years old because time makes fools of us all. But time does not make a fool of Mantis, the newest playable character in the game. Appropriately, most of the latest events in the games are related to the Guardians of the Galaxy, so slide on in and enjoy the over-the-top antics of the greatest heroes in the cosmos. It also works in some Christmas-themed things, but that also feels Guardians-related this year due to that Disney Plus special. Anyway, Mantis! She is cute and funny and hisses sometimes. Neat.
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 Merry Christmas and/or Happy Holiday, everyone!
