Slay the Spire, Stardew Valley, and Ridiculous Fishing remaster coming to Apple Arcade

polygon.com:

Apple’s Arcade subscription service can be quite hit-and-miss — or overly focused on casual gaming — but this July, a trio of all-time indie greats will be joining the Arcade roster, and might make dipping in worthwhile.

Headlining the month of updates is an all-new remaster of the App Store classic Ridiculous Fishing by Dutch iconoclasts Vlambeer (Nuclear Throne, Super Crate Box). According to Apple, it’s a “full and expanded remaster,” now in 3D, that’s been “built from the ground up by the original award-winning team.” This is something of a surprise, since Vlambeer’s founders closed the studio down in 2020. Polygon has contacted Apple and Vlambeer for clarification.

Ridiculous Fishing is an enormously fun arcade game that involves plumbing the depths of the sea with improbable bait (such as a toaster), collecting as many fish as possible, hurling them into the sky, and then gunning them down. It was famously plagued by clones before it had even been released, but Vlambeer succeeded in defeating the copycats and releasing one of the outright best games on mobile. Along with the visual makeover, the new EX version adds a competitive mode with daily, weekly, and monthly challenges and leaderboards, and an “expanded and prestige-able” new game plus mode. Ridiculous Fishing EX hits Apple Arcade on July 14.

Also coming to the service are “App Store Greats” versions of the brilliant deck-building roguelike Slay the Spire and immortal farm sim Stardew Valley. Like other App Store Greats on Arcade, they gain a plus symbol on the end of their titles to indicate that you get all content and updates included, with no in-app purchases, ads, or other monetization (not that these two premium games had any of that in the first