"If there is an app for that"

Free Apps to Download TODAY ONLY 02/25/2025

February 25, 2025 by RSS Feed

Text behind image - Tebi , Command Word Jumble Compete , Rising Craft - A Game for Sandbox Building and more

iPhone:

Secret Photo Vault - Pixafe ( $59.99 → Free ) Tapstorm Limited Secret Photo Vault lets you hide and protect photos, videos, and anything else you want to keep secret. Manage everything in one place and organize how you see fit. You’re able to set up passcode, Touch ID, or Face ID for an extra layer of protection. You can even browse the web anonymously.

Stela - Astrology & Horoscope ( $99.99 → Free ) Clyfar Tech Astra Chat helps you navigate life’s challenges. Get career advice, conflict advice, or tips on personal growth. It’s useful for both big and little decisions. The app acts as your personal virtual coach to assist you in finding the best solution for your unique situation.

Text behind image - Tebi ( $5.99 → Free ) Francesco Romeo Tebi - Text Behind Image is an intuitive image editor that helps you add stunning text overlays to your pictures. Choose from a variety of font styles, sizes, color, opacity, shadow effects, background colors, and so much more.

Command Word Jumble Compete ( $9.99 → Free ) LandiTrance Words Command Line Jumble will put your word-guessing skills to the test. There are variety of different categories to unscramble for hours of fun. You’ll be competing against players from across the world. If you’re stuck you can use the hint feature or skip. The game keeps track of your guesses so can see all your past history.

Rising Craft - A Game for Sandbox Building ( $2.99 → Free ) effectmatrix Players have the power and freedom to create and destroy anything they dream up within a 3D space. Build your own kingdom, city, castle, or anything else you desire. Rising Craft has unlimited types of gameplay and offers both single and multiplayer modes.

Wake: Motivation & Inspiration ( $59.99 → Free ) Stress Free Music & Books LLC Wake - Motivation Daily Quotes is filled with a huge selection of motivational and inspirational quotes. There is always a fresh and meaningful quote to uplift your spirits.

Coding Game - Binary Hacker ( $2.99 → Free ) Daniel Reicher Coding Game - Binary Puzzle is an exciting world of binary numbers. Convert the given decimal numbers into binary as quickly as possible to score points. The faster you solve, the higher you score.

Source link: http://appadvice.com/apps-gone-free

Loop Hero review

February 25, 2025 by RSS Feed

I have some complicated feelings about Loop Hero. I remember is as one of the big games culture phenoms under the height of COVID (along with Among Us), and it is an enjoyable upgrade treadmill that is fun as long as its systems are playing nicely together. Sometimes they aren't, as there are a ton of disparate things at play in the game, but the fact that any of it works is rather impressive, and even moreso seeing it tied so well together by its surprisingly cool art and worldbuilding. On iOS, you'd think it's kind of the perfect game to dink around with, and it is fully capable of sucking you in, but I'm not sure it has aged all that well since its initial release.

Loot loop

In the event that you haven't played Loop Hero, some explanation for how it works is required. This game borrows from a lot of other places, but as far as I know there aren't really games like it. You play as a hero who is trying to build up some semblance of civilization at the end of the world, and you do this by going on adventures where your character automatically moves around a track to fight monsters, secure supplies, level up, and find gear that will help you fight even more powerful monsters.

Your role as the player controlling this revolves somewhat around switching up gear to make your hero as strong as possible, but the main focus is actually on building up the land features on and around the track (via cards) to try and make things as hard as possible while still being able to survive so you can score the most chances at getting powerful loot to take down and end boss for big resource rewards and some story payoff.

Repeating randomness

As you advance in Loop Hero, you build up a village in between runs and the structures you build grant bonuses, add new cards to play with, and even unlock additional classes with their own gear and special combat abilities. The core of what you do in each subsequent run remains largely the same, though: kill, loot, die/retreat, repeat.

There are times where this formula is totally engrossing. It can be incredibly satisfying to happen upon a build that lets your hero go the distance to fell a boss or find special items like trophies to tip your battlefield builds in certain directions. There are plenty of other times, though, where things like this simply do not come together, and either you die or you retreat just to venture out again and see if things shake out better next time. As a game that you could basically let idle in the background of your PC while you do other things, this is mostly fine, but in other formats, not so much.

Meager on mobile

Speaking of format, this mobile version of Loop Hero is serviceable, though some of its ideas to make it more mobile-friendly are a bit odd. Perhaps the nicest thing about this port is that Loop Hero has flawless iCloud sync, allowing you to continue progress between devices, or even tie up a device to allow for some idle play if you so choose.

Beyond that, Loop Hero has added some options to try and make its smallish visuals a bit more readable, but it's all via an awkward magifying feature that didn't quite feel right in all of the configurations offered. Luckily, I found it easy enough to see and read everything on screen when playing on my iPad, though on my phone it was a little more difficult, to the point that I considered turning on high-resolution fonts on the game. I didn't, though, because it kind of ruins the aesthetic of Loop Hero, which I may have only mentioned in the intro but it's cool as hell and goes a long way to make its idle/looping gameplay more appealing.

The bottom line

Loop Hero hasn't suddenly turned into a different game in the years since its release, but you can also see why there haven't been any splashy games like it since. At times, the game feels like lightning in a bottle. At others, it gives the feel of countless other games that are just random systems slurries. When you could play it somewhat idly (and when folks had a lot more idle time), I imagine it felt more magical than it does now playing on a device where you have to face its imperfections head on.

Source link:https://www.148apps.com/reviews/review-270082/

Strange Horticulture review

February 25, 2025 by RSS Feed

Even though I don't love the term I'm about to use all that much, Strange Horticulture is most easily described as a "cozy game," albeit with some eldritch horror vibes. You play as the proprietor of a rare plant store, and much of your inventory has special properties that your clientele seeks out to achieve their own ends. But Strange Horticulture declines to simply be a management game about collecting and identifying plants, which adds to its allure and makes it a compelling experience.

Sifting through secrets

The structure of Strange Horticulture is fairly predictable. Each day, a procession of clients enter your store and you learn about their lives and what they are seeking and use that to try and provide a plant that will aid them. With a setup like this, you might expect a game where you're balancing expenses, buying upgrades, etc. to grow your business, but none of that is in this game.

Instead, you go on foraging adventures directed by cryptic clues, page through manuscripts to identify your inventory, and brew elixirs based on half-remembered recipes, among other things, all in an effort to advance and direct a story caught up in ancient rituals and otherworldly evil. This all takes place within the confines of your shop and your interactions are tied to shuffling through papers on your desk as rain patters against the window and the shop cat rests on your counter.

Patient puzzling

Though it's not entirely clear when the game starts, all of your interactions in Strange Horticulture are connected and lead to a larger overall story. To advance some parts of this story in specific ways, you may need to have successfully used clues to gather the right plants when the time comes or have opted to give people plants they may not have actually been asking for. At times, the excercise of solving these clues can be tedious and involve some amount of trial and error, but thankfully none of it is so obtuse that you won't be able to recognize that something needs to be done.

It's also an incredibly smart move by the developers of the game to make its clue-solving and foraging gameplay untethered from the days that the game is broken up into. On any given day in the shop, you can opt to explore the map to look for plants as many times as you want, with the only barrier being a sort of travel meter that takes time to refill and can be replenished more quickly by serving customers or watering your plants.

Digging up dirt

Strange Horticulture has multiple endings and--upon reaching one of them--has some more game to offer around identifying plants that went unidentified in your playthrough. It's a nice addition, especially since additional new playthroughs will likely remove a lot of mystery around the plants and clue-solving, but removed from the context of the larger story it isn't nearly as satisfying.

The only real sore spot of Strange Horticulture is some of its user interface. I appreciate the game's commitment to having players organize actual pieces of paper, but in doing so you can come across readability issues that work much better in theory than in practice. For instance, there's a zoom feature that is very flexible and lets you read even the smallest text rather easily, but it doesn't always play that nice when certain objects are stacked on top of each other or if it doesn't get fully zoomed out.

The bottom line

There are a lot of novel and extremely clever ideas in Strange Horticulture, but by the time I finished with the game I was truly tired of its gameplay. I'm sure the issues with the game's UI had a lot to do with this, but even when things are working as they should, there's just a lot of procedural referencing and looking up that can get sloggy after a while. I'm sure another game like this could come around and find some success, but I don't think I'd be ready to play a game like Strange Horticulture again for a good long time.

Source link:https://www.148apps.com/reviews/review-270089/

Warbits Plus review

February 25, 2025 by RSS Feed

They say war never changes, but that hasn't stopped Risky Lab from reworking their nifty little tactics game into an updated "plus" version. For better or for worse, the changes that are present in Warbits Plus are slight and mostly feel like a way to update the look and feel of an aged mobile game that can still offer some fun, tactical action.

Modern warfare

It is clearly intentional that Warbits Plus is named the way that it is. This is no sequel. At it's core it is essentially the same game as the 2016 original. This is not to say there is no new content or updated features, however.

Warbits Plus has been fully rebuilt from the ground up, which allows for the game to display in full screen on newer devices, switch seamlessly between portrait and landscape views, undo boneheaded moves with an undo button, and play cross-platform multiplayer against people on PC or Android. In addition to this, it seems that some levels have also been reworked even though that isn't specifically noted in any of the press materials.

Almost advance

The lineage Warbits Plus is playing off of is still clear as day in this release. Military skirmishes here echo those of Advance Wars, including the same kinds of mechanics for capturing buildings, using special powers, terrain advantages, and more. To be clear: there's nothing inherently wrong with this, especially since Risky Lab comes at this with a level of care that demonstrates their respect for those games while giving a unique identity to their own creation.

That said, this approach feels a little less novel than it did when Warbits first released eight years ago, and it still suffers from a lot of the same issues I bump into when playing games like this. Everything is all fun and dandy until there's some level in the campaign that challenges you to be a tactical wizard or otherwise grind out a war of attrition, and--whether I happen to figure out the swift way to win or not--neither approach ends up feeling all that rewarding.

Kinks in the war machine

Up until I got to some of the late stages inWarbits Plus that put me off a bit, I also seemed to encounter some strange game behavior that I can't tell was purposeful or just a bug. For example, the touted "undo" button in this upgraded version of the game doesn't always seem to appear. I also found that I was unable to use any command powers if there was a unit (even if it was friendly) on my headquarters.

These might sound like small issues, but there were multiple times where I'd run into them and they would effectively kill any chance I had at winning. Maybe these are just design choices, but if they are they feel bad because they are unintuitive, underexplained, and inconsistent. So, as much of this ill will could be coming from my own negative experiences where I'd do something wrong and mess up a mission, it almost always ended up feeling worse because tools that are seemingly available to help bail players out or correct issues seem to just vanish under certain circumstances.

The bottom line

Warbits Plus is a charming little tactics game, and it's worth celebrating as a quality revamp of a beloved mobile title. I don't love the way its difficulty spikes or how some of its systems don't behave how I expect them to, but I can imagine tactics nuts or anyone pining for another Advance Wars seeing a lot to like here. Heck, even I like a lot of it. That just ends at a certain point, though, and it was before I had completed the game.

Source link:https://www.148apps.com/reviews/review-270100/

GUNCHO review

February 25, 2025 by RSS Feed

Arnold Rauers has been in the business of making clever little mobile games for awhile now, so it's probably no surprise that the release ofGUNCHO garners some attention. This game is a slight departure from the designer's typically card-based approach, though, and--while it can be pretty fun--it lacks some of the elegance and refinement of previous releases.

Step or shoot

GUNCHO is a wild west shootout game that takes place in a turn-based fashion. On a hexagonal grid full of cacti, oil barrels, and plenty of sand, you control a six-shooting desperado as they face off against waves of gunmen, trappers, miners, and more. Your goal is to clear all these waves by moving or shooting one turn at a time, though all it takes is one false decision to wind up biting the dust.

You see, in this game, you are just as fragile as your enemies, meaning any explosion, stray bullet, or brush fire can take you out just as easily as it can your enemies, so you have to be smart with your moves and with your ammo to survive. Another key mechanic to GUNCHO is how its gunplay functions. At the bottom of the screen you can see your revolver cylinder turn whenever you move, which is important because in this game you can only fire bullets if you have ammo in the chamber that points in the direction of what you want to shoot at.

Revolver roguelike

Outside of these systems, GUNCHO is a generally straightforward roguelike. When you clear a level, you get the option to choose an ammo or ability upgrade which allows you to pick from three random cards that give you new powers, like the ability to shoot piercing shots, leap over obstacles, etc. If you die, you can try again from the beginning starting with nothing.

GUNCHO offers three game modes, though all three are very slight variations on the same core game. Normal mode is--presumably--the default mode, which differs from Expert mode by having a more gradual difficulty ramp and the ability to retry levels a limited number of times. Finally, there's a daily challenge that adds three random mutators to the game, all of which are unique to that mode exclusively.

Randomness reload

There are times when GUNCHO feels freshly dynamic and like it's the best new tactical battler you can play with one hand. At others, though, the chain reactions of different enemy and environmental mechanics can feel too chaotic and random, ending runs in ways you couldn't have easily predicted. To account for this,GUNCHO does have its retry system (for at least 2 of 3 modes), but this isn't a very satisfying or elegant solution to this problem.

Of course, you can see if this is how you feel about the game for yourself, as it is free to download and play. If you like it, you can pay $4.99 for the "full unlock" of GUNCHO, which only seems to disable ads.

The bottom line

GUNCHO is by no means a bad game, but it does feel like it's missing something. Previous games from Rauers have a few more wrinkles to them that help make them stand out, whereas this game is just another solid roguelike.

Source link:https://www.148apps.com/reviews/review-270126/