Jokely, Visheo, Written Down, and other apps to check out this weekend
December 23, 2017 by RSS Feed
This week’s edition of our Apps of the Week roundup features a new app for watching and recording jokes, an app for sending video greetings and a new digital journal. And as always, we’ve selected two great new games for you to check out.
Jokely
Ready to laugh? Jokely is essentially Tinder for jokes. It allows you to watch thousands of folks tell their favorite jokes, and then you can swipe left or right to vote them up or down. You can pick up some new material for the upcoming holiday party, or record your own jokes and see how funny others think they are. There’s even a leaderboard to determine the best joke-teller on earth. Jokely is available for free.
Visheo
This app seemed like a natural fit with the holidays coming up. Visheo is an app that makes it easy to create and send a digital greeting card to your friends and family. Simply select the occasion and card-style you want, add photos and other content, record your video message and send it off. The recipient will receive your Visheo as as clickable web link. Visheo is available for free.
Written Down
Looking to make some New Year’s resolutions for 2018? Try writing them down in a journal. I know there are already several prominent apps in this category, but allow me to suggest a new one: Written Down. Features include embedded photos and other content, tag support, reminders and alerts, 15+ typography support, smart invert support, and much more. The app is free, but there is an IAP to unlock premium features. Written Down is available for free (with a single IAP).
Endless Drive
Rediscover the joy of driving. With built-in web radio streaming, realistic physics and a night and day cycle it’s up to you how to experience the game. Pick a slow and resistant car to have a long, safe and relaxing drive on the freeway across the desert, or grab a supercar and take off! Respect speed limits or escape the police, drive on paved roads or on sand ones—all while listening to your favourite music. Endless Drive is available for free.
Animus
Animus pays homage to punishing, albeit rewarding action games of a similar nature or genre. You’re not going to find any fluff here—just grueling and intense combat. Features include offline mode, strategic combat mechanics (button mashing will get you killed), electric cutscenes, 5 levels of difficulty, 4 area themes, 24 main quests, 11 main boss fights and MFi controller support. Early iTunes reviews say this game is worth checking out. Animus is available for $7.99 (with some IAPs).
More apps to check out
- Wikipedia for iOS picks up black reading theme perfect for iPhone X display
- Limneos launches MobileMiner, a free cryptocurrency mining app for iOS
- Google Hangouts has been optimized for iPhone X
- Plex launches Winamp-like miniaturized music player for Mac
- Musixmatch 7.0 brings overhauled UI, colorful lyrics experience, new functionality & more
credit : idownloadblog
Don't Let the Forgotten King Be Left Behind in These Meticulous Puzzles
December 22, 2017 by RSS Feed
Forgotten King ($2.99) by Jan Hrnjak is a challenging and mysterious puzzle game involving medieval kings and dungeons. If you enjoyed games like Campfire Cooking and Mr Future Ninja, then you'll appreciate what Forgotten King brings to the App Store.
About 10 years ago, The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass came out. It was one of my favorite Zelda games, and one of the few that I actually managed to beat without much help from other sources (aka my boyfriend). Even though I'm usually not a stealth fan, the parts of the game where you had to sneak past the Phantoms were fun, and I enjoyed them because they were puzzles in itself. With Forgotten King, memories of Phantom Hourglass come back to me because the gameplay is similar.
Campfire Cooking
Layton Hawkes
Mr Future Ninja
Appsolute Games LLC
Visually, Forgotten King is beautiful with the retro pixel art style that is fairly common in throwback games these days. Everything is rendered in 2D with bright and colorful hues. In the beginning of the game, as the story reveals itself, players will find an almost Disney-like fairy tale plot unraveling in a book, and it's lovely to read through. Animations are smooth and fluid, with no issues of lag or choppy frame rates on my iPhone 8 Plus. The game has a soothing, rather whimsical soundtrack that fits well with the fairy tale theme, and the sound effects fairly realistic. I mean, that sound of spikes coming up from the ground sounds believable to me, after all. Overall, the developer did a great job with the visual style and audio design.
In Forgotten King, players will find a chapter system for levels. However, at the moment, there is only the first chapter available, which has 18 stages (15 regular and three bonus ones). It may not sound like a lot at first, but the game itself is pretty tough, so it will take some time to get through this first set of puzzles, depending on your skill level. The developer has promised more chapters in updates, and it'll always be free. So if you manage to get through the first 18 stages of the game, there's more to look forward to.
In Forgotten King, you'll discover the tale of a King who once ruled the kingdom in a fair and just way. But there were four dark lords who reigned underneath the King's kingdom, and they eventually cast a spell that stripped the King of all power, his crown and throne, and locked him away in an eternal prison in the void.
Now this is where you, the player, comes in. Your job is to help the King through the deadly trials that await him, where he has to sneak past the patrolling guards, solve puzzles and figure out the mystery behind the Dark Lords. Only then will the King be able to have his spirit freed from their dark magic, and back to ruling his rightful kingdom.
Somewhere on each stage is a green gem. You have to grab it before you head to the exit door on the floor, because the gem unlocks it. There are also apples to collect, which you'll want to get if you want to do well. There's three stars to earn on each level, which is dependent on the number of deaths (you get three chances), apples collected, and reaching the door with the gem. The worse you do, the less stars you earn.
Controls in Forgotten King are simple, though a bit unique so it takes some time to get used to. Buttons that resemble bullseyes appear on the screen to indicate the direction that the King can move in. The King continues walking until he reaches a corner or an intersection, where you must then choose the direction you want to go in. Think of the buttons as a giant D-pad that shows up on the screen only when you can move in a certain direction, because sometimes only one, two, or three buttons appear.
Timing and precision is everything in Forgotten King. You need to figure out the right moment to make your move in order to not be stabbed to death by spikes from the floor or impaled by the guards. Your movement is very limited, so you'll have to observe first before moving. Observation is also key if you are a perfectionist and want to find every single secret in the game, as there are many hidden mysteries to uncover.
Like I mentioned before, the game may only have 18 levels right now, but these puzzles get tricky, and you may end up dying a lot (at least I am), so it will take time to complete. Granted, sometimes the puzzles get frustrating, but over time you learn what mistakes were made and end up avoiding the same error twice.
Forgotten King is a beautiful and challenging puzzle game that tests your timing, precision, and patience.
The Good
Forgotten King has a lot of good things going for it. The hand-drawn pixel art is incredibly well done and packed with detail, and the music by Fat Bard is excellent. Even though the puzzles can be a bit frustrating, I learned from my mistakes and just try again, so it clearly motivates you because they end up being so obvious. The controls are simple enough and work well for the restricted movement system of the game. I'm also looking forward to seeing the new chapters added with each update.
The Bad
While I like Forgotten King overall, I think the controls are a bit weird. I think having a simple d-pad in the bottom corner could have been enough, since the current control scheme has me reaching out with my thumb or finger on my iPhone 8 Plus screen. Perhaps the developer can consider optional touch screen controls in updates.
The verdict
I'm still early on in Forgotten King, but I'm thoroughly enjoying it so far. The puzzles themselves are meticulously crafted so that they're challenging, and a true test of skill. The vintage pixel art is also beautiful to look at, and the soundtrack is immersive. The controls work okay, but it would be preferable to have an option that lets one play the game with one hand on a larger device, I think. Still, this is a fun and challenging puzzle game that will test your patience.
8.6
OVERALL
Graphics 9
Sound/Music 9.5
Gameplay 9.5
Replayability 8
Game Controls 7
Forgotten King
Jan Hrnjak
Source link: http://appadvice.com/reviews
credit : appadvice
Free Apps to Download TODAY ONLY 12/22/2017
December 22, 2017 by RSS Feed
Little Luca , Mystery Word Town Spelling , Labo Paper Plate and more
Universal:
Little Luca ( $0.99 → Free ) Glowingpine Studios HB Help Luca gather up the stars by bouncing the ball from wavy-jiggly hills, squish-able moons, and more. Collide with as many stars as you can, all three per level is best, before launching the ball into the dark, mysterious portal. It's a crazy quest spanning three realms and nearly 100 stages, depicted in comic book-style art.
Mystery Word Town Spelling ( $3.99 → Free ) Artgig Studio Mystery Word Town will build spelling confidence in your young child. To help the ghost get from room to room and building to building, your child will need to collect letters and spell words. Along the way they’ll earn talking portraits to add to their gallery. The portraits have different stories to tell through colorful characters. The game includes nine themed buildings, support for multiple user accounts, bonus challenges and unique rewards, and customizable skills.
Labo Paper Plate ( $1.99 → Free ) Labo Lado Inc. Labo Paper Plates taps into your child’s imagination. They’re able to select from 15 different paper plate craft activities. The step-by-step instructions allow your child to participate in every part of the process from cutting out shapes to coloring them. Their creations can then be used to play games and participate in a variety of activities.
The Secret of Chimera Labs ( $1.99 → Free ) Aircamp Games The Secret of Chimera Labs takes you on a fantastic journey. As lead detective, you’re put in charge of tracking down Doctor Teresa Von Awesome. In order to do so, you’ll need to sift through clues, discover items, and solve complex puzzles all within the curious confines of Chimera Labs. The game includes more than 100 environments, an in-game notebook, a hint system, and more than 80 unique items to hunt down.
EXIF Viewer by Fluntro ( $2.99 → Free ) Fluntro Want to know everything about your photos? Just launch EXIF Viewer and provide it with access to your photo library. EXIF Viewer will then grab each photo’s EXIF metadata and display the most important information right below. You can swipe across a photo to view even more detailed information. Tap on a photo to bring up the ability to remove the EXIF data. The app also includes a wide variety of other handy features including a photos extension, three viewing modes, a Messages app, and the ability to copy EXIF metadata to the clipboard.
Drive About: Number Neighborhood ( $2.99 → Free ) Artgig Studio Drive About will help your child practice number identification and writing, counting, matching, and ordering. The highly interactive environment will keep your child hooked for hours on end. Half the fun is just driving, flying, and sailing around town to find mini-games to play. The mini-games themselves are highly engaging as well, requiring your child to control colorful little creatures to complete number exercises.
aTimeLogger 2 ( $4.99 → Free ) BGCI Thanks to its intuitive interface, aTimeLogger ensures you won’t waste a lot of time tracking your time. The main menu provides you with a large grid of activity icons, but if you can’t find one that suits your activity, go ahead and create your own. To track an activity, just tap on an icon to start the timer. At the end of the day you can view all of your stats and generate custom reports.
Wobbly Stack AR ( $3.99 → Free ) esDot Studio Inc Wobbly Stack AR is a fun way to try out AR and pass some time. Your iPhone or iPad acts as your tether, providing precise controls that allow you to twist, pull, and push blocks around. The dynamic Haptic feedback system makes it as if you can feel the blocks, but it’s only available on iPhone 7 and newer devices. Varying block sizes create an extra layer of strategy. Wobbly Stack AR also includes pass-and-play multiplayer.
The Hunt for the Lost Treasure ( $2.99 → Free ) Syntaxity Inc. The Hunt for the Lost Treasure continues the adventure of The Lost Ship. On your latest quest, use the map discovered on the lost ship and hunt down the pirate’s cove. To do so you must pick the correct paths, solve puzzles, and search through old structures with just a tap. A built-in hint system will assist you when you’re stuck, and a dynamic map will ensure you won’t simply go running around in circles.Source link: http://appadvice.com/apps-gone-free
credit : appadvice
The Bridge is a Lie in Bridge Constructor Portal
December 21, 2017 by RSS Feed
Bridge Constructor Portal ($4.99) by Headup Games is a licensed mashup of both the Bridge Constructor and Portal games. If you're a fan of either franchise, or just like physics-based puzzles in general, then you'll get a kick out of Bridge Constructor Portal.
In 2007, a little puzzle platformer game came out called Portal. It came bundled with The Orange Box, but became a standalone game later on. Four years later, Portal 2 came out. I had the original Portal game before the sequel and played through some of it, but it was Portal 2 that really got me into the series. I beat Portal 2 and even did some of the multiplayer missions before I was officially done with it, but it's always been on of my favorite games ever made. I've been hoping for a third Portal for years, but as of now, Bridge Constructor Portal is the only thing we have. So I'll go with it, despite not having played a Bridge Constructor game before.
Bridge Constructor
Headup Games GmbH & Co. KG
Visually, Bridge Constructor Portal looks beautiful, as it is full of familiar scenes from Aperture Science's test labs. The game is rendered in 3D, though the "new employees" are flat, generic figures. If you've played Portal games from before, then the bright white test rooms are sure to feel like home, and the soothing, ambient glow of the portals make you feel relaxed. Bridge Constructor Portal also has some of your favorite things from previous games, such as turrets and even GLaDOS herself (complete with Ellen McLain, the original voice actress), which is a good reason alone to buy the game. Animations are smooth and fluid with no lag on my iPhone 8 Plus. The atmospheric soundtrack is quirky like the previous Portal titles, and sound effects are delightful. While this is a spinoff game, it certainly brings together everything I love about Portal.
In Bridge Constructor Portal, since it's a physics-based puzzle platformer, it still uses a level system. The game has a total of 60 levels that are split up among six chapters. Players must go through each stage in linear order, so to progress, you'll have to be a good Aperture Science Labs employee and successfully complete each test. The goal? Build safe paths to get the Bendies across hazards, traps, and other obstacles in order to get to their vehicles and continue their work. It starts out pretty easy, but things start to pick up gradually. Let's just say...some thinking will be involved when you get to later stages.
Controls in Bridge Constructor Portal are pretty easy and intuitive. On each stage, you must build roads and ramps for vehicles to drive on to get to their destination. You have metal scaffolds and suspension ropes, which you can use to your heart's content by switching between the two on the left side of the screen.
For scaffolds, just build them from an orange anchor point. Then connect the other scaffolds together until it reaches where you need it to go. These scaffolds can be converted to roadways with just a tap and vice versa. Suspension rope can be connected from a scaffold anchor to anchor points above, and they are necessary to hold the scaffolds up so that they don't face gravity's wrath.
But what happens when there are no anchor points for suspension rope? When that happens, you'll have to use the metal scaffolding for suspension, in a triangle-formation. Just don't convert them into roads, and you're all good! If you make a mistake, just double tap on the item you want to get rid of.
The premise seems simple, but things get more intricate and complex later on, especially when famous Portal gadgets get added into the mix. For example, you'll have to have one driver hit a switch for others, and then there are the portals themselves, propulsion gel, aerial faith plates, cubes, sentry turrets, acid pools, laser beams, and much more. They all add a unique mechanic to the level and you'll have to work with or around them to succeed.
The classic bridge construction simulator is combined with a Portal theme.
The Good
Bridge Constructor Portal is a nice spin off of the Portal games, because it seems that Valve can't ever have a trilogy. For what it's worth, Bridge Constructor Portal is satisfying in its own right. The graphics are top notch, the music and sound effects are just as delightful as the original games, and Ellen McLain back as GLaDOS is fantastic. Controls are fairly simple for the touch screen, and the puzzles themselves are quite challenging.
As someone who's never played Bridge Constructor before, I'm actually enjoying this interesting combination, and I think it works well.
The Bad
Again, while Bridge Constructor Portal is a good game to get your Portal fix, this is not an actual Portal game, which is disappointing. And while the controls work out well, I think that this game is best played on an iPad due to more screen estate. I found myself constantly trashing pieces or stretching out old pieces instead of what I actually wanted to do, which got annoying. However, I also think that time and practice can fix that issue too, so it's doable on an iPhone screen, as long as you have some patience.
The verdict
As a Portal fan who will probably never see a "Portal 3," I think Bridge Constructor Portal will have to do. It's a fine mashup, really, but don't come in to this expecting a full on Portal game, because that's not what this is. It's a challenging puzzler that will test your problem-solving skills, with a Portal theme, essentially. As a newcomer to Bridge Constructor, this is fine by me. The game itself looks great, the music is delightful, and I'm just happy to hear GLaDOS' voice once again.
Bridge Constructor Portal is a great entry point to both Portal and Bridge Constructor and should be a game for any puzzle platformer fan's collection. You can find Bridge Constructor Portal on the App Store as a universal download for your iPhone and iPad for $4.99.
8.9
OVERALL
Sound/Music 10
Graphics 9.5
Gameplay 9.5
Replayability 8
Game Controls 7.5
Bridge Constructor Portal
Headup Games GmbH & Co KG
Source link: http://appadvice.com/reviews
credit : appadvice
Free Apps to Download TODAY ONLY 12/21/2017
December 21, 2017 by RSS Feed
UFO on Tape , Dollar Bill Origami , Superimpose and more
iPhone:
Tower of Fortune ( $0.99 → Free ) Game Stew Play as a retired hero who is forced to draw his sword once again when his daughter is taken by an unknown power. Spin the wheel to battle opponents, earn gold, and obtain special items. The game includes 39 different enemies, 37 types of equipment, 39 combat quests, 12 tavern quests, and three different endings.Universal:
UFO on Tape ( $0.99 → Free ) Revolutionary Concepts UFO on Tape is an iOS classic that has stood the test of time. Hold your iPhone up in the air and start recording. The idea is to keep the UFO within view at all times as you go speeding through the countryside. As you’re trained in on the subject, you’ll have different objects pass through your view and the UFO will make sudden turns. Don’t give up. Don’t lose focus. Otherwise it’ll disappear into thin air.
Dollar Bill Origami ( $1.99 → Free ) Andreas Bauer Dollar Bill Origami will brighten anyone’s day because after folding these fun shapes, there’s no doubt you’ll be handing out money to friends and family in order to share your work. Dollar Bill Origami includes 10 shapes to fold including a heart, shirt, box, and gondola. Each design includes step-by-step instructions and diagrams. Folding guides and techniques are included as well.
Superimpose ( $1.99 → Free ) Pankaj Goswami Apps that allow you to superimpose or juxtapose photos are usually cumbersome, but not Superimpose. That’s what makes it so great. Load up a background image, a foreground image, and then mask out the unwanted portions of the foreground image using a variety of tools. You can also smooth edges, move, scale, resize, rotate, and adjust other parameters of your image before saving it or sending it off via Twitter, Facebook, or Tumblr.
Aureus ( $1.99 → Free ) Galta Take a good look at the board while it is lit up because the lights will go out! You must then match elements to create electrical currents that will briefly illuminate the board, disintegrate the elements, and turn them into gold. While the board is briefly illuminated from creating a match, you will have another chance at seeing where elements are located and how they’re aligned. If you wind up not getting a good enough look, you can use a hint. The game includes three modes, loads of ways to upgrade your gold producing machine, and achievements and leaderboards via Game Center.Source link: http://appadvice.com/apps-gone-free
credit : appadvice
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