Outlanders 2 brings hot and cold new town-building environments to Apple Arcade

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Outlanders 2: Second Nature, a town-building strategy game, offers new players new tropical and wintery environments to build in, much more resources to work with, and more challenges.

It’s one of three games to launch on Apple Arcade on Wednesday, along with Punch Kick Duck+ and Zen Koi Pro+.

Get 200+ games for one price on Apple

Rather than paying individually for games, or enduring nagging to make in-app purchases in “free” games, Apple Arcade offers over 200 choices for a single $6.99-per-month fee.

Additional games used to debut on the service weekly, but a more recent strategy has each month’s new titles launch at the same time. That includes three fresh options on Wednesday.

Outlanders 2: Second Nature from Pomelo Games

Town builders are a popular genre, hence the original Outlanders way back in 2019. The Cult of Mac review calls it, “a huge amount of fun – frustrating and nerve-wracking at times, but also immensely satisfying.” It’s done well enough to justify a sequel.

“A courageous new generation of outlanders are ready to reshape life in the Outlands with new approaches to building and surviving an ecosystem more vibrant than ever before,” says the developer, Uruguayan indie studio Pomelo Games.

In addition to fully revamped graphics, Outlanders 2: Second Nature offers new Tropiclands and Winterlands biomes with weather events and double the amount of buildings and resources than before.

It also includes a campaign mode with 21 levels at launch and a challenges mode updated biweekly.

Outlanders 2: Second Nature is available now in the App Store for Apple Arcade subscribers. It’s playable on iPhone, iPad, Mac and Apple TV, and supports external game controllers.

Plus two App Store classics

To beef up the number of games in its subscription service, Apple adds previously released titles that have proved themselves top be popular and calls these App Store Greats. A “+” is added to the name, and the purchase price is $0.

Another difference between the new and the original version is that any in-app purchases have been stripped out. Apple Arcade doesn’t allow them. The same goes for ads, loot boxes and invasive player tracking.

Two of these Greats launched July 3.

Punch Kick Duck+ by Shaun Coleman challenges players to fight through the tower of the cruel Baron Tigrisso, battling his hench-critters. The rules of the game are simple: Punch beats kick, kick beats duck, and duck beats punch. Players will need to think quick and act quicker to send their foes flying. It’s playable on iPhone, iPad, Mac and Apple TV, and is ready for wireless controllers.

On the opposite end of the gaming spectrum is Zen Koi Pro+ by LandShark Games. It’s designed for relaxation, with players collecting over 50 koi patterns, each boasting vibrant colors and captivating designs. The fish grow and turn into dragons, as the myth foretells. The game is only for iPhone and iPad.

Ed Hardy has been writing full-time about tech for 26 years, and using it for much longer than that. His intro to Apple was a Macintosh SE/30 (which he still has), but now he uses a 13-inch iPad Pro as his primary computer.

That’s because he’s a “tablet first” type of guy. Rather than use a Macbook, he connects a keyboard case to the iPad. And instead of a desktop Mac, he connects his tablet to a 27-inch display and full-size keyboard. (So don’t try to tell him that everyone has to use a Mac to be productive.)

Before coming to Cult of Mac, Ed wrote for NotebookReview, TabletPCReview and Brighthand, as well as other sites.