Dead Trigger (iPhone, iPad) $0.99
Zombie-shooting games are a pretty well-worn genre in the iTunes App Store, but Dead Trigger sets itself apart first and foremost by carrying great graphics. The game was created by the same developer that made the recently released Shadowgun, another beautiful title using the Unity Engine, and like that game, it brings lots of shooter action in great 3-D environments.
Each level in Dead Trigger follows the story of a character working to survive the zombie apocalypse, taking out enemies by blasting them in an attempt to rack up points and big combos. The more accurate you are with your shots, the higher your score as you work through Dead Trigger’s levels. The game’s creators state that there’s 40 hours of content worked into the title, all for a buck.
Kingdom Rush (iPhone, iPad) $0.99
Strategy title Kingdom Rush started its life as an iPad game, but the title is finally available on iPhone as well. A fantasy-themed tower defense game, Kingdom Rush includes a mix between towers and special abilities that players can use to stop incoming goblins and defend their territory from attack. Killing enemies earns players more gold, and that money can be invested in upgrading towers to make them more powerful.
In addition to just using towers to fight off enemies, players also are able to place small groups of soldiers to block enemy advances. Strategic use of soldiers, plus special magic powers like meteor strikes, are key to taking down enemies and pulling down the best scores. There’s also Game Center support for achievements and leaderboards.
The Amazing Spider-Man (iPhone, iPad) $6.99
The latest high-quality iOS game from Gameloft is the official tie-in game for the film The Amazing Spider-Man. Things have improved quite a bit since the last time Gameloft took a turn at a Spider-Man game. The controls are mostly the same, with one button for punching and kicking, another that handles web-slinging and one for dodging incoming attacks, but this time, players have access to a huge open New York City to explore.
Players can web-sling around New York, taking on side-quests where they can save civilians and aid the police. As you complete missions, you’ll earn points that can be used to upgrade Spider-Man’s abilities. The game also follows the story of the movie, with plenty of guys to beat up and dialog to enjoy in between boss fights.
Squids Wild West (iPhone, iPad) $0.99
The sequel to last year’s role-playing/strategy title Squids picks up after the conclusion of the first game. A group of cartoon squids are working to stop an evil black sludge that’s corrupting their oceanic home, taking over other animals and turning them evil. The first game’s mechanics make a return in this turn-based RPG: you take turns flinging your squids at enemies to hit and kill them, while also seeking out power-ups, hidden items and more as you fight through each level.
Like its predecessor, Squids Wild West features beautiful hand-drawn images for cutscenes and allows players to find or purchase new equipment for their squids to make them more powerful. You can also recruit your own squid army from 12+ playable characters.
Cthulhu Saves the World (iPhone, iPad) $1.99
Making the jump from Microsoft’s Xbox LIVE service and the PC, Cthulhu Saves the World hits iOS and brings old-school role-playing along for the ride. The game is a top-down, 8-bit title in the style of old games such as Final Fantasy, in which players fight in turn-based battles against enemies by choosing options from various menus. Cthulhu will definitely trip your nostalgia if you’re familiar with older titles in the RPG genre.
Better still is the game’s story, which is actually rather hilarious. It concerns the Lovecraftian elder god Cthulhu who, because of a wizard’s curse, must become a hero before he can be freed to use his magic to save the world. Accompanied by various characters including his very own groupie, Cthulhu has somewhere between six and 10 hours of content to work through on his path to saving the world and breaking the curse.
I’d Cap That+ (iPhone, iPad) $0.99
Slap random captions on all your photos with I’d Cap That+, an app that can turn any image into a joke – or maybe even an Internet meme. You can load images from your iOS device’s camera roll into the app, and I’d Cap That+ allows you to slap a random, hilarious caption on the image at a moment’s notice, then share it with friends via Facebook and Twitter.
I’d Cap That+ also offers you the ability to add your own captions to your photos before you share them, or just randomize the captions, drawing from one of hundreds of funny and rude offerings. The app is meant for comedy, so keep that in mind as you use it.
Rough Guides Trip Lens (iPhone, iPad) Free
Document your next trip with the help of Rough Guides Trip Lens. The app allows you to record what’s happening on your trip with your iOS device, then link the content to a location using its GPS capabilities. You can then share the content with your friends and family through Facebook and Twitter.
Rough Guides Trip Lens lets you save your photos and videos when you shoot them even when you don’t have a Wi-Fi connection, and uploads them automatically later. You can also get a web address where all your photos are saved, so that they’re easy to share with others whenever you want.
Matching With Friends Free (iPhone, iPad) Free
The latest of Zynga’s “with friends” multiplayer titles brings match-three gameplay to an arena where you can compete with your friends. In each turn of Matching With Friends, players get access to three blocks that consist of three colored squares. Your job is to place your blocks on the board, which is set up in a grid, with the goal of making as many groups of three or more colored blocks as possible.
Each turn has players pulling down as many points as possible, but Matching With Friends is asynchronous, the same way that games such as Words With Friends are. The game doesn’t require players to make their moves at the same time, but rather can be played whenever you have a free moment. You can also integrate the game with Facebook and Twitter to challenge your friends and followers.
Wafflr (iPhone, iPad) $2.99
Got a public speaking engagement for which you need to prepare? Check out Wafflr, an app that’ll help you practice public speaking ahead of time to make sure you nail your presentations. Wafflr helps its users by allowing them to record their presentations ahead of time and work on things like timing, content and structure through practice.
Wafflr lets you compose your talk piece by piece by recording it in sections to help with memorization and timing. You can also restructure your talk once you’ve got it recorded by moving clips around to see how they work together in different orders. You can also see what the overall length of your speech will be.
WOMMA (iPhone, iPad) Free
Getting your message out through social media for anything, be it self-promotion or a product you’re trying to sell, can be tricky. Non-profit Word of Mouth Marketing Association is in the business of making it simpler, and has just put out a new app that brings industry articles, stats, infographics and more to readers.
You can read all the content found in WOMMA at your leisure and adjust it by altering the fonts and presentation to make it easier to digest. Content can be downloaded and read offline, so you don’t need a constant Internet connection, and you can also share stories, multimedia and more with friends through Facebook and Twitter integration.
Velocirapture (iPhone, iPad) $0.99
The dinosaur rapture has come to prehistory, and you need to help out the Dinosaur God as it raptures the good green dinosaurs and smites the evil red ones in order to score points. Your job is pretty simple – you flick green dinosaurs upward into the waiting hand of the Dino God with an upward motion on the touchscreen, and smite red dinosaurs by drawing downward across them.
The more dinosaurs you flick to safety and smite in a row without messing up one or the other, the higher a multiplier you’ll gain and the more points you’ll earn. You have to be careful to take down the red dinosaurs before they try to reach paradise, or risk losing. Velocirapture tracks your scores on its Game Center leaderboards and also provides achievements.
Tumblr update (iPhone, iPad) Free
Blogging service Tumblr has updated its app to make it easier to post text, videos, images and more to Tumblr websites no matter where you are, provided you have an Internet connection. The app already made it possible to quickly make posts from within the app, as well as to comment on other people’s posts and reblog them. It also lets you access multiple blogs to update from within the app, too.
The new update includes the ability to search by tags and includes Spotify support for blog posts. The user interface has been updated to make the app easier to navigate, and shortcuts have also been added that make it simpler to quickly access your device’s camera and make posts, or to switch to text posts. Tumblr has been optimized to run faster with the new update as well.
Stitcher Radio update (iPhone, iPad) Free
Internet radio app Stitcher Radio is designed to bring lots of great news, talk, comedy and sports programming from all over the world to listeners in one easy-to-navigate place. The app allows you to create custom radio stations from Internet radio, listen to shows on demand, and access a wealth of content from stations all over the country and beyond. You can also share what you’re listening to with friends through Facebook and keep up with the news through Stitcher as well.
A recent update to the app brings a new “Smart Station” to your Stitcher listening options, which brings in the top content from thousands of sources to give you a sampling of what’s available and provides recommendations based on the things you tell the app you enjoy. There’s also some increased streamlining with sharing on Twitter, a new sleep timer that turns off your radio shows as you go to bed, and album art available on your device’s lock screen while you use Stitcher.
Yesterday (iPhone, iPad) $4.99
Point-and-click adventure games have seen something of a renaissance in recent years. With the rise of touchscreen devices such as the iPhone and iPad, the once-fading genre has seen a resurgence among indie developers that has helped revitalize the genre and its storytelling method. Yesterday is the product of the return of interest in adventure titles, making the hop from PC to iOS and bringing a dark story along with it.
The game has players controlling various characters as they work through the comic book-styled telling of the story of serial killings taking place in a city. Players have to solve puzzles in their environments, picking up various objects and combining them in clever ways while advancing the story forward. It’s standard fare if you’re used to games like Broken Sword or Myst, and Yesterday’s adult story makes it something worth checking out, especially for fans of the genre.
Avocado for iPhone (iPhone, iPad) $1.99
Using Avocado is like firing up a two-person social network, designed specifically for you and your significant other. The app is meant to make it easy to stay connected and share things with one another even when you’re apart, specifically keeping things private. You can use the app to quickly send messages and photos and create shared media galleries that are yours alone.
Of course, sometimes you might want to share things with the outside world as well, and Avocado makes it easy to selectively share things on Twitter and Facebook as a couple. You can also use the app to make and share lists that can be practical, like when planning grocery trips or when you need to give the other person a reminder. Avocado is also available for Android devices, so you can link up with your partner even if he or she isn’t also an iOS device user.
Cloth update (iPhone, iPad) Free
Social fashion app Cloth is a place where you can store share your outfits and fashion sense, getting ratings and comments on your clothes and ideas from friends and family. The app allows you to take and share photos of what you’re wearing through various social networks, tag your favorites with different attributes to note what sort of weather and situations you can wear them in, and to discuss others’ outfits with them as well.
Cloth’s latest update integrates the app with wundeground.com. That means Cloth can now take a look at the weather in your area with your iOS device’s GPS capabilities, then search through the wardrobe you’ve uploaded and suggest outfits for you based on the conditions. The app also now includes photo editing capabilities and filters that you can apply to your shots before you share them, and the ability to search through your outfits by their tags to find the clothes that fit your needs.
The Act (iPhone, iPad) $2.99
Putting players into the realm of a cartoon is The Act, a comedy in which you have to help main character Edgar attempt to win the woman of his dreams. The controls are simple: in each stage, you need to swipe either left or right to control Edgar, with the basic premise that left makes him more timid and right makes him bolder. Every level generally includes interaction with other characters in a way that’s specific to the moment, like when Edgar impersonates a doctor and has to blend in with other doctors.
Though the gameplay is pretty simple, the animation and production values for The Act are of a pretty high caliber. The game looks great and is actually quite funny, despite not including any actual dialog. It’s an interesting experiment in what’s possible in iOS games, even if it’s over too fast and a little short and over-simple.
Fish Heroes (iPhone, iPad) $0.99
Okay, it’s another Angry Birds-alike title in which you fling animals at other animals and structures. Let’s go ahead and get the similarities out of the way. Where Fish Heroes is different, and worth a look, is that it places players in a 3-D world. Your goal is to use various kinds of fish with different powers to take down sharks, and the goal is to use the fewest fish to beat each level.
Fish Heroes mixes up the genre first by throwing various kinds of sharks into the mix, each of which must be dealt with in different ways. Its levels are also built in such a way as to require a lot of strategic thinking to get the best scores, and are often challenging in a different way than most similar titles. There’s also Game Center support for achievements and leaderboards.
Centipede Origins (iPhone, iPad) $0.99
At one time or another, everybody has likely played the classic arcade title Centipede. In it, players control a defense tower that shoots enemy bugs as they streak toward the bottom of the screen and attempt to kill you. Centipede Origins reimagines the game in touchscreen-compatible form with a whole new art style, putting you in control of a gnome that has to fight off bugs to protect his homeland.
Centipede Origins also awards players with coins that can be spent on power-ups at the opening of each level to boost your abilities. You can obtain special powers as well as different gadgets, and each has a different effect on the battlefield. You’re scored on how many bugs you can take down as they come at you in waves, and those scores can be shared on Game Center leaderboards.
Trivial (iPhone, iPad) $2.99
Challenge your Facebook friends and family members to trivia competitions with Trivial. The app users your Facebook connections to help find you opponents, and then lets you challenge them to quick, timed matches of eight questions each. The game is asynchronous, so your opponent doesn’t have to be playing at the same time as you to accept your challenge.
Trivial holds itself apart from other trivia game titles by allowing players to buy and use power-ups in their games. You’ll earn coins each day automatically, and can purchase more, then trade them for items that can give you an edge – slowing down the timer to keep your score high or eliminating false options from the list of choices. Your scores are tracked in the app, and the better you do, the higher you’re in-game IQ goes on your profile.
Flipboard update (iPhone, iPad) Free
One of the most lauded reader apps in the iTunes App Store is Flipboard. It started its life as a sort of RSS feed aggregator for the iPad, bringing in news articles and intermingling them with Twitter timelines, Facebook updates and other articles and social media in a fairly beautiful magazine-like presentation. The app has since jumped to the iPhone and continues to receive accolades and strong reviews.
Flipboard’s latest update brings a whole lot of bug fixes interspersed throughout the app. It also recently got a big content update, adding new capabilities that include new audio features. You can now link Flipboard to SoundCloud and browse through recommended audio feeds, and the app also is compatible with Readability, so links and articles can be saved for later for easier reading.
Whisper update (iPhone, iPad) Free
Back in January, Frank Warren, the postcard curator behind the online community art project known as Post Secret, was forced to take down the iOS app related to postsecret.com because of abusive posts within it. Whisper is making an attempt at becoming what Post Secret was, allowing users to share anonymous secrets in an online community by combining text with photos.
Whisper creates a social network in which users can view others’ secrets and leave some of their own, as well as make comments on various offerings and share them through Facebook, Twitter and Tumblr – all anonymously. The app is something of a combination between Twitter, Facebook and Instagram, making it easy to create artistic and creative posts and discuss them with other users.
FUUSIO (iPhone, iPad) $0.99
Logic puzzles get pretty complex in FUUSIO, a game that will tax your brainpower. Each level of the game has a simple premise of combining colored squares to make complete ones. Each level is based on a grid, with colored squares forming portions of a larger one. Your job is to combine the right patterns of shapes to create complete squares, but FUUSIO gets a whole lot more complicated with the addition of lots of other squares that can alter your shapes and move them around the grid.
FUUSIO includes 200 levels, with more to be added later, according to its developers. It scores players based on the speed with which they finish each level, and includes 3×3 and 6×6 levels for increased difficulty. There’s also Game Center support, which packs leaderboards and achievements.
Trippy for iPad Free
Travel app Trippy is about finding things to do when you’re out in the world. When you plan a trip, you can use Trippy to find points of interest near where you’ll be staying, follow user reviews of different attractions, and get recommendations about what activities you should try or places you should visit during your trip.
As you’re planning your trip ahead of time, you can save places you want to visit and other attractions on a personalized map of the area with Trippy. Then, once you arrive, you can find things around you using your iPad’s GPS capabilities. Trippy also syncs with the browser version of the service, so any plans you make on your computer get ported to the app using your Internet connection.
WhoSampled (iPhone, iPad) $2.99
WhoSampled is a music discovery app, but it’s not for identifying songs you hear on the radio or when you’re walking through the mall. Instead, WhoSampled turns its attention inward, to the music you have stored on your own iOS device, to tell you where the different parts of that music come from. It analyzes songs, finds samples within them from other songs when they’re present, and brings you the information about the music that has come to make up the songs you like.
Once you’ve discovered the tracks that have been sampled in the songs you already own, you can listen to them side-by-side with your original music by streaming from YouTube. You can also get information about the samples you discover and share the songs and info with your friends through Facebook and Twitter. And you can comment on and rate tracks and samples to engage with the larger WhoSampled community.
Split! (iPhone, iPad) $0.99
Strategy fans will get a kick out of the simple but engaging Split!, in which players control a pair of soldiers as they fight their way out of imprisonment. The rules are pretty simple: use cover and team tactics to take out guards before they have a chance to kill you. Split! uses a top-down viewpoint and touch controls that allow you to issue orders about where to go and where to take cover. Your characters engage enemies automatically, so the tactical portion of the game is all about placement and protection.
Each level of Split! is scored based on how fast you complete it, and each one also has three hidden boxes you can find throughout to maximize your performance on its Game Center leaderboards. It also has an exclusive soundtrack and developer Touchy Interactive promises more content to be delivered in future updates.
Savi People (iPhone, iPad) $0.99
Keep all your contacts straight, from all the services you use, with the help of Savi People. Bringing in your contacts from Facebook, LinkedIn, and other social networks, Savi mixes them with the contact list in your iOS device, making it easy to find and get in touch with anyone, or even with groups of people. Savi People also gives you lots of ways to connect with those contacts, including using the various social networks on which you find them by sending things like direct messages or posting on timelines.
Savi People’s biggest benefits are involving organization. It’s easy to create profiles for your contacts and to copy and paste them in other places to make sure you have all the information about a given person on-hand. You can also do things like initiate FaceTime calls or send group messages, create sub-groups for your contacts for greater organization, and set some people as favorites so that you can access and contact them quickly.
realMyst (iPad) $6.99
The classic PC adventure game Myst has been available on Apple’s iOS devices for some time, but realMyst is the definitive version of the game, designed with the iPad 2 and new iPad in mind. The game has improved graphics in real-time 3-D, allowing players to adventure through the island of Myst in their own way, choosing their own paths.
RealMyst includes both the entire original game and the expansion Rime Age. Its graphics have been improved with the power of the iPad 2, and also packs Retina support. It has new save systems and an auto-save system to make sure you never lose your progress, and also includes a hint guide to help you stay on track within the game.
Zynga Slots (iPhone, iPad) Free
The latest iOS offering from FarmVille maker Zynga is Zynga Slots, a casino-themed app with all the gambling game capabilities you’d expect. The free app is rather simple – it’s a standard slot machine, but it packs the ability to play as many as 40 lines on a single pull of the one-armed bandit’s lever. It also include some social integration that nets you free coins to play with when you invite your friends to check it out.
As you play in Zynga Slots, you’ll be able to earn upgrades for your slot machines to make them better based on how well you do. You can also enter “Fever Mode” as you play to nail higher payouts throughout. You can grab shared jackpots with your friends, and play mini-games for bonuses as well.
Eat Well Business Travel (iPhone, iPad) $1.99
When out on the road or bouncing from airport to airport, it can be hard to eat well. Fast food and restaurants don’t always offer the healthiest of options. That’s what Eat Well Business Travel is for. The app is designed to make it easy to find the right things to eat while traveling, no matter where you are in the world or what your options might be.
Eat Well is basically a fast-paced nutritionist in your pocket, giving you quick tips for the kind of food you might encounter in places like airports. It’ll give you tips on what’s best to eat and what you might want to avoid while you’re there. It also includes tips on foods you can bring with you when you travel, which are both portable and nutritious.
R-Tap US (iPhone, iPad) Free
Mix the endless running genre with the rhythm genre and you get R-Tap US. At the start of the game, you choose a character and start taking her into various levels, where you’ll need to execute certain touchscreen actions in rhythm with the music you hear. The actions are pretty simple – swipe and down or tap when prompted. The more actions you hit in a row with proper timing, the more points you can rack up.
R-Tap US includes a bunch of different game modes you can unlock, as well as a few free songs to play when you download it. It’s a free-to-play title, though, so you’ll need to purchase more songs in order to keep going. Luckily, R-Tap just got a big update that brought in more songs and albums to give you plenty of rhythm with which to tap along.
Mutant Storm (iPad) $2.99
Formerly an Xbox LIVE Arcade title, Mutant Storm has hit the iPad with all the force you’d expect. The top-down shooter has players flying around 3-D arenas, avoiding enemies and taking them out as quickly as possible to rack up points. The more enemies you take out without getting hurt, the more points you’ll earn. But take damage and you’ll lose your multiplyers.
Mutant Storm includes 89 arena levels to play through. It also runs at 60 frames per second on the new iPad, which is pretty impressive and similar to its performance on an Xbox 360. Mutant Storm includes Game Center support, which provides achievements to earn and leaderboards on which players can track their scores.
Temple Run: Brave (iPhone, iPad) $0.99
Tying in with the upcoming Pixar movie Brave comes Temple Run: Brave, a reskinning of the super-popular mobile game with a great new visual style. If you’ve played Temple Run, you basically know what you’re getting into with Temple Run: Brave – swipe left or right to take corners, up and down to jump over or slide under obstacles. You can also tilt your device left and right to move to different positions on the path and grab coins.
Coins can be spent on power-ups as you play Temple Run: Brave, helping you to snag better scores and climb the Game Center-supported leaderboards. The game also looks great with its Brave-inspired artwork and graphical style.
Suspect in Sight (iPhone, iPad) $0.99
Hop into a police helicopter and run down some fleeing criminals in Suspect in Sight. The game uses tilt controls to allow you to fly around three different cities, using your spotlight to identify suspects. In order to get full points, you need to keep your light on the suspect cars until the police on the ground can catch up to the suspects and stop them. There are also special gems you can grab after you bring down suspects.
Suspect in Sight has four different helicopters you can earn through the course of the game that make it a little easier to grab full points as you take down each wave of suspects. You can also unlock additional game modes to play as you go through, as well. And there’s also Game Center support that provides achievements to earn and leaderboards to climb.
Human Defense (iPhone, iPad) $1.99
By now anyone familiar with games in the iTunes App Store has seen quite a few tower defense games come and go, and while they might not be too different from one another, many often have a charm all their own. Human Defense brings quite a bit of that, putting you in charge of protecting organs from roving viruses with the help of three different brands of towers.
The difference between Human Defense and other tower defense games is that it has an element of timing worked into its strategy. You can’t place or upgrade your towers until an organ receives nutrients, and so you’ll need to wait for things like carbohydrates and proteins to work their way through each level and get where you need them. Paying attention to when nutrients are coming is key to success and makes Human Defense a little tougher and more active than some other tower defense titles.
Fancy update (iPhone, iPad) Free
Fancy is a lot like Pinterest, but designed more for style and products. The app provides lots of photos that users can flip through, and similar to services such as Pinterest, you can “fancy” those images you like to create what the app’s designers call a “museum of you.” What’s more, many of the items shown on Fancy include price tags and are available to purchase right from within the app.
You can also do a lot of social stuff with Fancy. When you hit “fancy” on items, other users who “follow” you on the social network can see the things you enjoy and like them as well. You can leave comments on various items and read the comments from other users, as well as share things through social networks and email. With the new update, you now get “fancy credits” when you invite friends that you can put toward actual products.
Adventures of Valentin – The Valiant King (iPhone, iPad) $1.99
A point-and-click adventure game with a unique style, Adventures of Valentin is all about solving puzzles. In each level, or scene, you have a definitive goal – get into a castle, sneak past a guard, and so on. You need to interact with the level in a certain way to solve the puzzle of the scene, avoiding getting caught while you work to get where you’re going. You’ll need to tap different items in the environment for Valentin to interact with them and solve the puzzle.
Like in other adventure games, Valentin can pick up objects and use them with other objects in the environment as well. You’ll need to figure out how to use different things you find to open locks, knock out guards, and otherwise help you progress in each level to reveal the game’s story. Adventures of Valentin also includes a hint system in case you get stuck, and features stylish hand-drawn graphics.
Foursquare update (iPhone, iPad) Free
Location-based check-in app foursquare is pretty well-known at this point. The app lets users “check-in” when they go to various locations, earning loyalty rewards when they visit locations a lot of times. You can also share your check-ins with your friends, allowing you to see where your friends are hanging out, and for them to see where you are.
Foursquare has gotten quite a few big content updates, but the latest redesign brings a new user interface to the app to make it easier to use. The update also adds a new feature to its check-in capabilities, providing users with recommendations of where else they should go and what other places they should check out. It also includes the ability to search for things like Wi-Fi access and other aspects of businesses.
30/30 (iPhone, iPad) Free
I’ve heard that a nifty trick you can do when trying to force yourself to do something, such as writing, is to set a timer. Block of 30 minutes, cut out all distractions, and just work until the timer goes off. When that happens, you get a break, and you can mess around on Twitter, check Facebook, and do all the other junk that distracts you from accomplishing things. That’s the idea behind 30/30 – it’s an app that’s all about setting timers.
When you add your tasks into 30/30, you give them each a time limit. When you’re ready to start, you fire up the timers. 30/30 keeps track of how long until you should switch tasks, then advises you to do so when the time runs out. It’s an easy way to make sure you devote only a few minutes to checking emails, for example, and can help you become more productive by helping you set goals and give yourself breaks throughout the day.
MyPsych update (iPhone, iPad) $4.99
Keep track of your wellbeing with MyPsych, an app designed to help you monitor yourself in order to get better treatment of mental health issues. The app makes it easy for you to monitor how you feel each day and what’s bothering you, with the hope that by having the information available, you’ll be able to see what portions of your life are giving you trouble and work to deal with them.
The app includes a daily tracking mechanism with which you can use number values to measure how you’re feeling and what’s going on in your environment. You can measure what your outlook is like, as well as external factors such as the weather. MyPsych has also been updated with a journal-keeping feature that lets you keep notes or make journal entries for each day to document how you’re doing.
Unlock (iPhone, iPad) $0.99
Solving three-dimensional puzzles is the premise of Unlock. Each of the puzzles is made up of blocks with various sizes and shapes, all interlocked together. Your goal is to take the blocks apart in the correct order to figure out how to unlock the puzzle. The faster you do it, the better your score on each level.
Unlock includes more than 30 puzzles to work through and uses touch controls to allow you to manipulate them. Swiping allows you to spin the puzzle around so you can see it from all angles, while leaving one finger on the screen and using a second one lets you try to pull the blocks apart. Unlock also includes Game Center support and provides leaderboards and achievements.
Snaptime (iPhone, iPad) Free
Photography app Snaptime might remind you a bit of apps similar to Instagram. Like Facebook’s newly acquired social networking app, Snaptime makes it easy to adjust your photos by applying different filters. It allows users to add several filters, changing things like color and adding different effects to create interesting and unique shots.
When you’re finished adjusting your photos, Snaptime also makes it easy to share them with others. You can do that through email and integration through various social networks, such as Twitter, Facebook and Flickr. You’ll need to snap photos within the app to adjust them, however, as you can’t pull shots from your Camera Roll just yet.
PaceDJ Running App update (iPhone, iPad) $1.99
PaceDJ combines a simulated pedometer with the music you need to stay motivated whenever you go for a run or bike ride. You set your pace (or have the app measure it for you) to determine how fast or slow you need the music you listen to during your workout to be. Too fast, and a song can become uncomfortable or encourage you to move too fast, but too slow and the opposite effect can happen. PaceDJ helps to keep that from happening.
The app can measure your pace from iPhone’s accelerometer capabilities, which it uses for the pedometer features. The app will use that info with the songs on your device, matching them to PaceDJ’s database to figure out just how many beats per minute each one uses. Then it assigns those songs that match your pace to your workout playlist – but you can adjust your tempo at any time, and you can even fix any songs that are identified with incorrect BPM counts.
No Red T-Shirts (iPhone, iPad) $0.99
There are some goofy laws to be enforced in No Red T-Shirts, and luckily, you’re just the malfunctioning police robot to do it. In No Red T-Shirts, you’ll need to move around each area, locating people who are breaking the law according to an ever-changing mandate. For example, if your indicator says the law says no dogs are allowed, you’ll need to find and tap on all the people walking dogs to collect fines from them.The challenges change quickly, and your goal is to issue as many fines as possible in order to earn money for the city. Once you do that, you can use the funds you gather from fines to build things like shops and upgrade them, as well. You’ll also unlock new fines and challenges as you unlock new stuff. There’s also Game Center support for achievements and leaderboards.
Dreamt It (iPhone, iPad) Free
Share your dreams with Dreamt It, an app designed to help you remember the dreams you have each night. When you set it up, Dreamt It prompts you with an alarm that’s added to your regular everyday wakeup call, reminding you to record the dreams you had during the night. It supports both text input and voice recording, since recording a dream often needs to take place fast before one forgets what happened the night before.
Dreamt It is designed so that its alerts take users directly into the app for saving their dreams, and you can set your alerts for whenever you want, although it’s best to set your alerts for when you’ll wake up. The app also makes it easy to share your dreams with friends and family, using the app’s built-in Facebook and Twitter support. Posting dreams on Dreamt It also lets you save them on the app’s boards.
Dead City (iPhone, iPad) $0.99
Zombie shooter Dead City mixes a number of interesting mechanics in its gameplay. At its heart, the app is a third-person shooter in which you run away from flocks of zombies as you shoot to keep them off you, using a number of weapons to take down pursuing zombies as they charge you. Players also get other opportunities as well, snagging fuel as well as new weapons, which lets you alternate between driving and shooting to take down as many zombies as possible.
You can access as many as five vehicles throughout the course of Dead City, which you can also upgrade significantly to make more powerful. You can also access more than 40 weapons and armors to make you a stronger zombie combatant throughout Dead City, and you can find and upgrade new weapons to make them more powerful.
Spellet by PuzzleSocial (iPhone, iPad) $0.99
It might seem simple, but spelling game Spellet is actually very difficult. In each level, your goal is to spell a word that’s shown to you at the top of the screen. In order to spell the word, you need to fire a ball at the each letter in the word and have the ball hit each letter in the right order. That means plotting the path of the ball from the blaster in the corner of the screen through each letter, to make sure you can solve each puzzle directly.
Later in the game, you’ll receive new items that allow you to affect how the balls bounce around puzzles with the rubber-band item. These can add to puzzles and change the way the ball moves through the course of the level. How accurately you can move the ball through each stage is key to winning throughout the 100 maps found within Spellet.
Roaming Hunger Food Truck Finder update (iPhone, iPad) Free
Finding food trucks in your city just got a little easier with a big update to Roaming Hunger Food Truck Finder. The app’s newly-released version 2.0 throws in a new user interface to make navigation easier, augmenting its central focus: making it easy to find the location of nearby food trucks using your iOS device’s built-in maps capabilities. The app searches for info for trucks using resources like Twitter, narrows down their locations, and makes them easy to spot and get directions to when you’re hungry.
The update now makes vendors sortable, so you can seek out the kind of food you like and mark trucks as your favorites to find them easily in the future. You can also make use of new social interaction features, allowing you to leave comments and ratings on food trucks and even upload photos of your meals. The app provides lots of information and profiles on each vendor, too, so you know exactly what you’ll be getting when you finally track your mobile lunch down.
Project 83113 (iPhone, iPad) $0.99
Part platformer, part endless runner, Project 83113 successfully blends a number of mechanics to make a great side-scrolling action title. You control your character with swipe commands, triggering running either left or right, as well as leaping over obstacles or sliding beneath danger. In each level, you can search for hidden objects, execute wall jumps, and fight off enemies with gunplay, too.
Most of the combat in Project 83113 is automatic: Your character zeroes in and fires and you’re responsible for avoiding incoming fire, as well as other hazards. You can also trigger special weapons as you fight and gather extra health to keep yourself alive, plus you can upgrade your guns to make them more effective. Project 83113 also includes Game Center support for achievements and leaderboards.
Catapult King (iPhone, iPad) $0.99
Think Angry Birds from a first-person perspective and you have Catapult King. It’s a lot like other titles in the genre, except that the castles you must destroy and the soldiers you must take out are presented in 3-D. That makes for a unique challenge as you attempt to destroy everything with your catapult, because not only do you have to think about the structures in terms of left and right, like in Angry Birds, but also their depth when you want to dismantle them and trigger big destruction.
Catapult King scores you on the destruction you cause, the time it takes you to do it, how much ammo you use and whether you find a special hidden coin in each level. You can track your progress and how well you stack up against other players using the Catapult King’s Game Center leaderboards and achievements. You can also earn upgrades for your catapult and use magical abilities to power yourself up in each level.
Planet Money (iPhone, iPad) Free
The official app for the National Public Radio show Planet Money brings full episodes straight to your iOS devices, allowing you to listen to the show’s in-depth financial reporting wherever you’ve got an Internet connection. It includes all kinds of financially-geared news from the Planet Money team, including articles and even segments from other shows on which they appear.
The Planet Money app allows you to browse through all the show’s content, and you can also search for specific things that you want to hear or read. Once you find stories and articles you like, you can easily share them with others through email, Facebook and Twitter.
Plague Inc. (iPhone, iPad) $0.99
It might be a little gross to think about, but Plague Inc. challenges players to create a pathogen that can annihilate the human race. You choose a country in which to start, infecting your first patient, and then start mutating your disease to make it more resilient, more infectious, and more deadly. But you’ll need to work carefully and quickly, because humans will actively try to stop your spread with cures and closed borders.
You advance your disease by gathering “DNA points,” which you can grab by tapping orange bubbles that appear on the screen and by infecting more people. Those points allow you to mutate more rapidly and be more effective. Plague Inc. includes about 10 disease types and three difficulty modes, and Game Center support for achievements and leaderboards.
Love Me Not (iPhone, iPad) $0.99
Love Me Not combines tilt-based gameplay with the need for perfect timing. The game presents you with a flower covered with petals, and invading bugs trying to get to the center of it. But the petals are your line of defense, and by tapping them, you can launch them at the insects to destroy them. Moving petals into position to be fired is done by tilting, which rotates your flower left or right.
Love Me Not is a fairly simple game, and yet it’s addictive and difficult to master. You’ll need to be careful about your aiming to be effective, as well as quick with your timing and spot-on with your ability to gauge the angles at which your petals will fly. Love Me Not scores you for how long you survive and how many bugs you take down, and tracks your scores on its Game Center leaderboards.
Hmmm (iPhone, iPad) Free
Social networking app Hmmm makes social networking easy for users who want to share certain things with certain people. The app lets you create different “avatars” for different aspects of your personality – like work and family, for example – so that when you share things on social networks such as Facebook, you can pick and choose who sees what by choosing the appropriate avatar.
Hmmm’s avatars give you quite a bit of privacy, because you can set all kinds of various controls, like limiting who sees posts from a certain avatar and adding nicknames for each. You can also post photos and even songs through Hmmm when you share. It’s also compatible with foursquare to make sharing check-ins easy, as well.
Mooklet (iPhone, iPad) Free
Apps that allow users to display their photography in different, interesting ways continue to populate the iTunes App Store. Mooklet allows you to create a story from the photos you take with your iOS devices by adding text and arranging them in order to make something unique.
Mooklet lets you add photos to albums quickly and drop in text in order to tell full stories along with them. Once you’ve finished, you can publish your albums as HTML 5 documents online, making them available to friends and family by sharing the links you create to your albums.
Dungeon Village (iPhone, iPad) $3.99
Developer Kairosoft has rolled out another great iOS simulator title with a new theme. This time, the game is Dungeon Village, and the goal is for players to set up a medieval town that can support adventurers as they head out into the wilds to fight monsters. In your town, you’ll construct things like inns where adventurers can rest up and armories where they can buy new equipment.
Like the recently released Epic Astro Story, your Dungeon Village is slowly populated by more and more adventurers who start to call it home. As they do, you can dispatch them to complete missions and earn more money for the town, and you can distribute items like weapons and equipment to your adventurers to make them more effective.
Any.DO (iPhone, iPad) Free
To-do list app Any.DO is one of the most popular productivity apps on Google’s Android operating system, and now it has made the jump to iOS. Any.DO uses a minimalist, intuitive user interface that’s designed with touchscreens in mind, allowing you to quickly drag and drop items onto your to-do list or calendar, swipe through your appointments, and so on.
Any.DO also includes a lot of features that make it more social and easier to use with other people. You can share your to-do lists with friends and family members, or sync your lists among multiple devices to keep them up to date. You can also add items by using a speech-to-text function that will convert your dictation into items on your lists.
Order & Chaos Online update (iPhone, iPad) $6.99
Gameloft’s mobile World of Warcraft-alike, Order & Chaos Online, has been available in the iTunes App Store for a fully year, and in celebration, the developers have pushed a big content update to bring lots of new stuff to the game. Like other massively multiplayer online titles, Order & Chaos has players creating characters and adventuring through a huge online world, completing quests and forming groups with other players.
In the new update, Gameloft has added 3G data support, so now players can connect to Order & Chaos even if they’re not playing with a Wi-Fi connection. There are also new quests to undertake, and users who have been subscribers to Order & Chaos for longer than three months will receive a special in-game “pet.” There’s also a new in-game lottery system and lots of new fixes and little improvements that have been worked in throughout the game.
Light the Night (iPhone, iPad) Free (on sale – usually $0.99)
Endless runner titles have to do something especially interesting to stand out from the crowd in the iTunes App Store. Light the Night is just such a title, and succeeds in differentiating itself through style. The game looks and sounds great and concerns you, a lightning bug, who has been struck by lightning, sending you into a super-speed dash across a pond in which you have to collect “lumens” to stay afloat and avoid crashing into flowers and other bugs, which can slow you down.
As you play through Light the Night, you’ll also work through various “missions” that require accomplishing specific goals in order to earn more lumens. Those lumens can be converted into power-ups and upgrades. Light the Night also includes Game Center support and provides achievements and leaderboards.
Etsy update (iPhone, iPad) Free
The official app of the handmade item sales website, Etsy, makes it easy to browse what’s available on the site and to make purchases, but the app has gotten even better with its most recent update. Already users can search through stores and offers, have conversations with sellers and see your past purchases.
In the new update, users can create customized “Channels” that aggregate certain kinds of items and look up particular users and shops. You can also follow other Etsy users and view your previous browsing history. The update includes improvements for sellers, too, such as the “Shop Stats” dashboard that shows orders, views and most of all, revenue.
dealBoard update (iPhone, iPad) Free
Deal-finding app dealBoard brings coupons and deals to users that are a custom fit for you. The app lets you choose things you like and makes predictions about things you’ll enjoy, making the deals available to you without clogging up your email inbox. Deals are also brought in based on what’s near you and what your friends recommend, as well.
DealBoard’s recent update brings in a new feature that helps you track down deals that are even more relevant. It now includes a “brand picker” feature that allows users to sort brands into different groups – one full of brands that are of interest to you, the other into brands the app should ignore. You can also share deals on Facebook, and the app has been packed with more deals than ever before.
Inferno+ (iPhone, iPad) $2.99
Lots of games in the App Store take on the popular motif of a minimalist wireframe presentation in the twin-stick shooter genre, but those games all tend to have similar premises in which players guide a ship around an arena, blasting away at enemies for as long as they can survive. The difference with Inferno+ is that instead of just flying around in an empty space, players have to navigate levels with tighter corridors and entrenched enemies, forcing them to think about strategy and exploration.
Inferno+ includes 40 different levels to play through, and as you go through each one you’ll collect points and items that can be used to upgrade your ship and make it a more powerful killing machine. There’s also Game Center support, which provides online leaderboards on which to track your high scores, and achievements to earn.
The Inversion Project (iPhone, iPad) Free
Third-person shooter The Inversion Project ties into Namco Bandai’s upcoming console shooter Inversion, and both games are about manipulating gravity and shooting bad guys. The Inversion Project is meant to serve as (something of) a training course for the larger game. In it, you play a soldier who has to fight off various robots and other enemies by running from position to position, taking cover before popping up and blasting bad guys or hitting them with either high or low gravity.
Your gravity-adjusting tools allow you to create new cover in different locations or to move objects out of your way, and you can also send bad guys crashing into things by zapping them as well. Your scores depend on how well you dispatch enemies, and they’re tracked on Game Center leaderboards.
