StoryCut - Review
November 20, 2020 by RSS Feed
With the popularity of video clips, video editing tools on mobile are not in short supply. Such apps are often swamped with new features, including rich filters, special effects, cute stickers, variable speeds, rough cuts, and even adding recordings. It can often all be a bit much.
In that case, is there a video editing app that is powerful and comprehensive enough to cover all the features provided by existing video editing apps? The answer is – yes, StoryCut is the only video editing app you need on your phone. So if you’re a big fan of clip creation, try StoryCut, which allows you to quickly finish what you want and share it on your desired social media platform.
If you are an amateur, StoryCut also customizes the clip sizes suitable for various social platforms, such as Tik Tok, Instagram, and YouTube - so that you can share the clip with one click after making it. StoryCut has standard editing functions, such as video cut and filters. It’s worth looking at the features in StoryCut that are absent from most editing apps.
PIP
PIP (picture in picture) allows you to merge images with a video. When we tried to overlay an image of a starry sky with my portrait, we saw an incredible double exposure. Using the green screen matting feature, we placed a video in a Jurassic Park scene, and created a Hollywood-style effect.
Keyframe
Keyframe is a dominant feature of StoryCut, a feature previously only available in professional clipping tools on the PC. In this feature, you only need to set a few keyframes to make any material move according to the trajectory you set. For example, if you want the object to move in sync with a moving car, you just need to add two keyframes. This feature can even achieve special effects like those seen in science fiction movies.
Effects
StoryCut offers a vast number of popular effects for short video platforms. Add an old TV frame to the video, or a gold dust effect can give you a dreamlike image. There are also some split-screen effects you can utilise.
Speed
You might think that video speed adjustment is a regular feature - but StoryCut can increase the speed by eight times, with many similar apps only offering half that. We imported a video of some skateboarding and got amazing results after adjusting the speed and combining it with the reverse play function.
Adjust
StoryCut contains 18 fine adjustment parameters, which can make up for the shortage of filters, saving the poorest videos that even filters cannot do anything about. I imported a video taken on a cloudy day with poor lighting, for example, but found that even with a filter, I could not get a nice color. Then I turned on the image quality adjustment. After a series of parameter adjustments, including brightness, sharpness, contrast, saturation enhancement, and color temperature reduction, the video looked brand-new, just like the image quality of a movie, and the clarity was significantly improved.
Very satisfactory results were obtained.
The Good
As detailed above, StoryCut has everything. You can perform every edit imaginable, and the interface is intuitive
enough to allow you to do it in no time at all. It’s entirely conceivable that you could have a video or slideshow with sound effects, cuts, transition, custom audio, double-exposure effects, and picture-in-picture ready in under five minutes.
For the most part, the effects and filters are tasteful and stylish, too, so StoryCut will let you turn out productive, high-quality content at speed. Curious prospective video editors could easily spend hours experimenting with all the tools and functions on offer, some of which are surprisingly advanced.
While tools like Instagram and your phone’s camera software will enable you to apply basic filters and stickers and so on, none of them contains anything like the depth of functionality available in StoryCut. In that sense, the app emphatically earns its place as an advanced, bespoke video tool.
The Bad
StoryCut can recognize voices to generate subtitles. With one tap, you will see subtitles auto-generated from the voices in your clips. For now, this feature is only supported on Android, but we hope the dev team will implement this feature on iOS sooner so users can also enjoy the ease of subtitling that the app provides.
Check out StoryCut via the App Store (and Google Play) and also its official site, Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube channels.
Overall
StoryCut is a comprehensive and intuitive video and picture editing app. VIP users will get the most out of it, as long as they don’t mind being subscribers rather than owners, but anyone looking for a richer alternative to Instagram should check it out.
8.3
OVERALL
iPhone Integration 9
Lasting appeal 8.1
User Interface 8
Is engaging 8.2
Does it well 8.3
StoryCut - Video Editor &Maker
Wenzhou XunChi Digital Technology Co., Ltd.
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MovieMusic Review
November 20, 2020 by RSS Feed
Music is a more powerful storytelling tool than most people realize. It’s the vital seasoning that makes every movie, TV show, advertisement, and internet video meme work how it should, manipulating your emotions in exactly the right way.
The problem is, using an existing piece of music involves paying exorbitant fees or drawing on classical pieces that everybody has already heard a trillion times.
MovieMusic aims to solve that problem for you by providing a library of compositions that you can dip into for every conceivable dramatic context.
These tracks, which have been written by a company of jobbing professional composers and performed by a live orchestra, tend to be around a minute long. They fall into 70+ albums, with titles like “Attractive”, “Badness”, “Excitement”, “Light”, “Christmas”, and so on.
The tracks themselves have titles too. In the “Love” album, for instance, you’ll find “Bond”, “Bliss”, “Longing”, “Intimacy”, and more. Each album contains 30 tracks, meaning there are over 2000 in all.
There are a couple of chapters of Orchestral Tools as well - subtle accents to create mood rather than full-blown musical compositions.
The first two tracks in each chapter are free, while the remaining 28 cost 99c a pop. The reason MovieMusic is able to sell its music so cheaply is that the files are restricted to a bitrate of 128kbs, and the tracks are licensed for personal, non-commercial use. So if you’re looking for a cheap way to score your next Hollywood project, you’ll have to look elsewhere.
The Good
MovieMusic is simple to use and it works surprisingly well. The Christmas music sounds Christmassy, the Comedy music sounds suitably quirky and upbeat (think Curb Your Enthusiasm), and the Disgusting music, somehow, sounds disgusting.
A bit of imagination is required when it comes to the individual track names, such as “Baking” (“Bright pizzicato helps show off the intricacies of the expert in full flow”), but on the whole MovieMusic provides snippets of music that intuitively belong in their categories and do what they’re supposed to do.
Every single one of the app’s 2000+ tracks is in the same key and tempo, too, so you can in principle blend them into a seamless orchestral score. It’s very clever.
This really helps when navigating the 2000+ tracks, as does the simple preview - or “audition” - facility that lets you listen to each track in full before deciding whether to spend money on it.
It’s also worth mentioning that each track in MovieMusic has three versions: Cinematic (the default), Intimate, and Modern. While the quality levels of the different versions naturally vary according to the track, in general we find that Cinematic is the one to go for.
MovieMusic has a seamlessly simple interface. You just choose a chapter, pick a song, and tap the play icon to listen. Once you buy and download a song you’re given the option of sharing it via iMessage, WhatsApp, Mail, or even opening it in iMovie or another video-editing program. It couldn’t be easier.
The Bad
While MovieMusic’s interface is intuitive and easy to use, its presentation is functional rather than enjoyable.
You could argue that the same applies to the music itself. This isn’t a criticism of the compositions, all of which sound polished and professional. But the wall-to-wall orchestral arrangements don’t reflect the breadth and variety of music right now.
There’s a bit of digital percussion overlaid on the tracks in Modern mode, but few other nods to contemporary musical styles. If you’re looking for a traditional sound, it’s perfect. Otherwise, you may struggle to find what you’re looking for - even in the Technology chapter.
Overall
MovieMusic is a slightly odd proposition. While asset libraries are usually for commercial use, this one is just for fun.
But it’s a fun tool that will add a pleasing sheen to your personal and non-commercial YouTube videos. It’s incredibly easy to use, too, and it contains a generous supply of musical morsels.
8.4
OVERALL
User Interface 9
Lasting appeal 8.4
iPhone Integration 8.5
Is engaging 8.1
Does it well 8
MovieMusic | Music For Videos
Gothic Projects
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Athenion: Tactical CCG Review
November 20, 2020 by RSS Feed
Athenion might not have the pedigree of some other deck-building card games available for mobile, but that shouldn't put you off. This is a game that's packed full of bright ideas, fresh new gameplay modes and enough content that you can lose hours of your life to.
Battles take place on a 4x4 grid, and see you taking it in turns with your opponent to lay down cards. You draw up to five cards from your deck of forty at the start of every turn.
These are the units you're playing in the fight, and they range from hulking monsters to flighty fairies, from magical trees to fearsome undead dragons.
Your cards have arrows on them that you show you which direction they can attack. You'll also notice a bunch of other numbers on the cards. These let you know the hit points a card has, how powerful its attack is and how many soul points it grants you.
Those soul points let you attack your opponent and they're the key to victory. The first player to lose all of their own hit points is the loser.
There's a lot more going on than that though. For one thing you need to pick from one of six different factions before you even get to the fights.
These factions have different strengths and weaknesses and figuring out which of them best suits the way you want to play is the first step of a pretty long journey.
Different factions have different special moves as well. Some let you link together cards to make them more powerful, others are all about sacrificing weaker units to create pockets of dark magical energy. One lets you build giant rock walls that you can use to protect some of your units or power up others.
There are single-player challenges, regular events and much, much more as well. You're never short of something to do in Athenion, and the pace of the matches lets you get a lot of them in in a single setting.
The Good
There's a staggering amount of depth to Athenion. It's going to take you a good while to get to grips with the basics and once you've done that there are layers and layers to peel back. Every time you win you'll figure out a new strategy and every time you lose you'll be trying to find a way to right that wrong.
The game looks amazing too. The cards all sport a brilliant anime art-style and you'll want to collect all of them just so you can check them out. The speed of the fights is a massive plus too - they deliver huge chunks of tactical action in the sort of short-blast sessions that are perfect for mobile play.
On top of that there's a brilliant community to the game, and you never have to wait long to find an online battle. There are a number of different modes that let you practice with different decks, take part in intriguing events and fight it out in ranked and casual multiplayer matches.
The Bad
There's a pretty steep learning curve here, so if you're not in for the long haul then you might be better finding your card-based fun somewhere else. Even when you've got the basics down you've still got a lot to learn and it can be punishing to come up against an opponent who knows more than you do.
There are also a lot of currencies, crafting materials and other rewards to figure out. The game does tell you what they do, but the tutorials are pretty brief and you're left on your own for a lot of the time to try and get to the bottom of things.
Overall
Athenion might not be the easiest game to understand, but once things start clicking it becomes something really rather special. There are some brilliant ideas here and they're woven into a bright tapestry of gorgeous visuals and wonderfully paced mobile play.
It won't be to everyone's taste, and it's fair to say that some players are going to put it down before they've even got to the good bits, but this is one CCG that it's well worth sticking with.
8.2
OVERALL
Replayability 8.1
Game Controls 8.2
Graphics 8.7
Sound/Music 8.2
Gameplay 7.8
Athenion: Tactical CCG
ZERO-bit Company Limited
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Prove Your Worth in Valhalla in Oddmar
November 20, 2020 by RSS Feed
Oddmar ($4.99) by Mobge is a challenging action-adventure platformer based on Vikings and Norse mythology. If you enjoyed other recent titles like Reed and Temple of Spikes, then chances are high that you'll like Oddmar. It's from the same development team of Leo's Fortune.
Since I was born in the '80s, I grew up with platformers during my childhood. I have fond memories playing Super Mario Bros. and Sonic the Hedgehog games with my siblings, and going to friends' houses and playing their games as well. Platformers are definitely one of those genres that we consider tried-and-true classics these days, and I'm always up for any new one that happens to pop up on the App Store, which turns out to be a lot. Though they're still a genre I'd prefer to play on a console with physical buttons, titles like Mikey Shorts seem to have perfected the controls, though are hard to come by. Still, Oddmar looked intriguing from the get-go, so I had to give it a shot. Plus, Leo's Fortune was a pretty good game back then, so it gave me high expectations with Oddmar.
Leo's Fortune
1337 & Senri LLC
Reed ^_^
Crescent Moon Games LLC
Temple of Spikes: The Legend
TIGRIDO, INC.
Mikey Shorts
BeaverTap Games, LLC
Visually, Oddmar is stunning and gorgeous, but that's to be expected from the team who created Leo's Fortune. Even though this is a side-scrolling platformer, everything appears to be rendered in 3D with the beautifully blurred and scenic landscapes in the background, with contrasting sharpness for the stage in the foreground. These layers give off the illusion of 3D, and it works incredibly well. Oddmar's depiction of Valhalla is ravishing, as the world looks lush and even whimsical. The colors are bold and vibrant, with some more muted, earthy tones mixed in along the way.
Oddmar is a distinctive looking Viking who seems to be bursting with a jolly personality, and the various animals and enemies you'll encounter are just as lively. Animations are smooth and fluid, so there's no issues of lag on my iPhone 8 Plus. The game also features an epic and delightful soundtrack to go along with the epic adventure, complete with what sounds like bagpipes and all. Of course, Oddmar is quite a special Viking, so there are some fun sound effects to go along with everything.
There's a unique story behind Oddmar, and it's revealed to players through a series of motion comics. These are hand-drawn and look fantastic, as they convey emotions and other tones well. Essentially, Oddmar is a rather odd Viking. His village has deemed him not worthy of being in Valhalla since he seems to have squandered all of his potential. However, one day he gets an opportunity to prove himself once more, but at a price. It's kind of amazing that the story of a Viking could be relatable for many of us, right?
Since Oddmar is a platformer, it goes along with the level-based formula. At the moment, there are 24 hand-crafted stages to get through. While that does not sound like much, the levels are pretty lengthy and full of challenging physics-based puzzles. So if you want to finish the game, that means spending some quality sit-down time with it, as there are also a lot of hidden secrets to discover too. The goal in each stage is to make it to the end where the ritual stone is. However, there will be many obstacles and new enemies along the way that try to prevent you from proving your worth as a Viking. Fortunately, you're armed and ready to take on all that stand in your way. Plus, there are checkpoints, so if you die, you'll just pick up from the last checkpoint you reached.
Controls in Oddmar are simple and intuitive. To move left or right, just slide your finger around in the bottom left corner. In order to jump, you'll swipe upwards from the bottom right corner. Though you can't double jump, you're able to jump off of walls, so take advantage of that. To attack, just tap the bottom right corner — if you do it fast enough, Oddmar goes into a slashing combo. You can do a shield slam by swiping down while you're in the air. This can let you reach higher spots if done on a bouncy surface, or you can break weak floors to get to hidden areas. For the most part, the controls are responsive so there isn't too much of an issue with that.
However, I'm not sure I like the swiping controls that are on by default. Fortunately, you can toggle on-screen controls in the settings, which puts buttons on the screen. This works out for me much better, and I'm sure for many others.
As you explore the various lands, Oddmar will find gold triangles to collect along the way. These are the game's currency, and they're plentiful. Every now and then, you'll encounter a shop on the stage, and you can "enter" it by hitting the bell with an attack. This opens up the shop, and you can check out new weapons and shields that you can purchase with your gold. These new additions can increase your attack power and speed, and protect you from more damage, so it's important to upgrade when you can.
Oddmar is a gorgeous action-adventure platformer that keeps you entertained while you prove your worth in Valhalla.
The Good
Oddmar is a fantastic action-adventure platformer that is full of content and challenging at the same time. The game looks beautiful with the hand-crafted artwork and motion comic cutscenes. The music is fun to listen to, and the sound effects give everything a dash of personality. While 24 levels doesn't seem like a lot, the length of each stage is pretty good, and the puzzles can be fairly challenging even for skilled veterans. The checkpoint system is nice since they're pretty frequent, so the game is forgiving and not frustrating. It's an overall great addition to anyone's platformer collection.
The Bad
While there is a lot of good stuff about Oddmar, I did find the swiping controls to be a bit odd to be the default option. At least you can change it to on-screen button controls, so I'm thankful for that. The only other negative is the fact that there are only 24 levels — I hope to see more added in the future, as it would extend the lifespan of the game.
The verdict
As a platformer fan, I love Oddmar. The game is visually amazing, and the music is top notch. Controls are nice once you find your preferred setting, and the gameplay is challenging. It's all rather humorous too, which makes it even more charming. And while there are only 24 levels right now, it will take some time to get through them all considering the length, as well as the hidden secrets to collect. Oh, and there are Dream levels to finish too, so the replay value is high.
Oddmar is available on the App Store as a universal download for your iPhone and iPad for just $4.99. There are no in-app purchases.
9.2
OVERALL
Graphics 10
Replayability 9
Game Controls 9
Sound/Music 9
Gameplay 9
Oddmar
Mobge Ltd
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Get Hoppy in Brew Town, a Craft Beer Simulator
November 20, 2020 by RSS Feed
Brew Town (Free) by AppBox Media and I Fight Bears is, as the developers call it, the world's first Craft Beer Simulator. If you enjoyed games like Project Highrise and Game Dev Story, but appreciate the art of making a fine brew, then Brew Town is the perfect little sim for you.
While I certainly don't drink as much as I used to, I still prefer craft beers over the mass produced stuff that's everywhere. Yeah, I guess I was a bit of a beer snob back then, but that's because the common stuff usually doesn't taste all that great. And please, don't try and say I'm wrong — no one is going to pick a Budweiser over a tasty craft beer from a small indie brewery if given the chance. When I heard of Brew Town a few months ago, I was eager for the game's release. I love simulation games, and throw some beer brewing into that? Heck yeah I'm in. After many months of waiting, Brew Town is finally here, and it's definitely a fun sim, though it has some annoyances.
Project Highrise
Kalypso Media Group GmbH
Game Dev Story
Kairosoft Co.,Ltd
Visually, Brew Town is rendered in beautiful 3D with a modern retro aesthetic. In some ways, it reminds me of Horizon Chase, probably because of the low-poly design. Despite that, Brew Town is still fairly detailed when it comes to the architecture of each building in your brewery, and the world is bright and vivid. As your brewery comes to life one-by-one, tiny little people will populate the area and drive through, so it's fun to watch it all come together. Animations are smooth and fluid for the most part — I did experience some slow frame rates when I had a lot going on and was furiously tapping away being efficient. There isn't much going on for the soundtrack, but Brew Town has the realistic sounds of sports games, bars, cars passing by, and glass bottles clinking together.
As you design your own brews, you can customize the bottles with a variety of stickers and decals. There's a lot to choose from, and each sticker acts as its own layer. Each one can be colored, resized, or even rotated to create your perfect label. Bottle colors and caps can also be personalized with your choice of color, so every brew is special.
Brew Town has you starting from the ground up, and in the beginning you'll start with Value Hops. As you complete specific goals, you can then upgrade to the next level of hops, but all of your building progress get reset. However, as you increase your choice of hops, they become faster to brew and much more profitable, so it's completely your call. Rebuilding on the next go takes less time, but you do start over with buildings, which I found annoying.
The process for your brewery is simple, and the game does have a tutorial that explains the basics when you start. Essentially, you'll have the hops farm, and when hops are ready to be harvested, just tap on them to collect. You can only hold so many hops at a time before it's full, so keep an eye out on your stock.
The next step is to start brewing. In the beginning of the game, you get a lager, and more brew types are available. However, to get access to other types, you must do research and create or improve a formula to earn a certain amount of profits before they open up. The more you research a formula to improve, the more expensive it becomes to research. With research, you choose a new flavor to add to the formula, then play a little mini-game where you must stop the dial in the designated green areas (or at least close to the marker) to ensure good quality.
The brewing is done with timers. The more profitable a beer is, the more time it takes to brew. You start the game with 50 litre brewhouses, but you can upgrade them to increase their capacity. When it's done brewing, you send it off to the bottling plant to go into your custom designed or default bottles. Just tap to bottle — it starts with one bottle per tap, but you can increase it through upgrades. Eventually, you'll also discover the tap-and-hold bottling method, which is another costly upgrade, but you can just long-press once to bottle.
All bottled brews are stored in the warehouse, which you can also upgrade to hold more. You can stock the bar, also upgradeable, to sell a certain number of bottles per minute for profits. Your HQ gets order requests from other businesses, and serves as a decent enough cash generator once you fulfill them. Once your brewery has delivered a certain number of bottles, you can upgrade your HQ.
As you play, you'll also notice some drones flying around — tap on these for quick cash. There are also pink limos and vans driving around that can get you bottle caps with a tap or some cash if you watch an ad.
Every now and then, you'll get large requests for sporting events. These orders are special and you only have a certain amount of time to fill the order, but the payoff is worth it, especially if you're in the more valuable hops territory. When these events happen, you'll want to make sure all of your brewhouses are brewing the specified brews for the order, and you may want to sell off unwanted brews in warehouse fire sales to make room.
All of the buildings you can build and use in Brew Town can be upgraded. However, they get extremely costly, and that's why it's annoying when you move up to a better hops since it all resets. However, you do at least keep your brew formulas, thankfully.
Your farm generates a few hops at a time, but the best way to get more is to play the mini-game, Hop-or-Not. This is like a Tinder for other brew labels that people have designed, and you can rate them with a "Yes" or "No" by swiping or tapping the buttons. While you can be critical, I find it's better to just give everyone a like so you can quickly accrue more hops, as a few get awarded after every five likes.
A craft beer brewery simulator.
The Good
Brew Town is a cute and addictive little simulation game that shows what it's like to manage your own craft beer brewery. The graphics are nice, and I love the realistic sounds effects. There's humor in the game too, with references to hipster Instagrammers and "sportsbowl" events, so that always brought a smile to my face. I think the coolest part about the game is the fact that you can design your own beer labels, which gives you a chance to get creative and make your dream label.
The Bad
Unfortunately, as I played the game for hours yesterday (it was so hard to put down), I had encountered a number of annoying glitches. First, for some reason, the game decided that it should reset one of my formulas that I had researched several times back to the beginning, and I lost my label design. This happened twice with two different brews, and needless to say it was pretty frustrating.
I also noticed that sometimes I would watch an ad for the promise of more caps or cash, but the game wouldn't do the payout after the ad was done. I tried watching the ad again and still nada.
And while customizing your own label is great, I encountered a glitch that made it impossible for me to truly make what I want. The color picker's bottom row is a no-touch zone on my iPhone 8 Plus, since the text "Label Designer" covers the bottom area of the colors. So I'm unable to access the blacks, grays, and whites for my labels.
Needless to say, I was a bit disappointed with the amount of bugs in the game. Hopefully they all get ironed out soon.
The verdict
Brew Town is an entertaining simulation clicker style game that is keeping me busy whenever I sit down and check in. I found the tutorial to be a bit unclear, but the game is pretty straightforward once you get the hang of things. And it's easy to just lose yourself in for a few hours at a time here, especially when you've become super efficient at brewing and filling orders. The graphics are great, and the sounds are nicely done. I don't really understand why all the building upgrades must be reset when you get a new hops though, and I hope the bugs that I've encountered get fixed. Still, I'll be playing this one for a while, at least until I get bored of running a successful brewery, anyway.
Brew Town is available on the App Store as a universal download for free for your iPhone and iPad. There are in-app purchases.
8.7
OVERALL
Replayability 9
Gameplay 9
Game Controls 8.5
Graphics 8.5
Sound/Music 8.5
Brew Town
AppBox Media
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credit : appadvice
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