iPhone App Reviews

Save the cheerleader, save the world?  Not quite, though there is a cheerleader and she could help you save the world. 

In Zombie Defense, rural Texas has been- except for four survivors- taken over by zombies, all a-hankering for a hunk of your merry band.  By day, you search for contraband to use in a crusade against carnivorous corpses. At night, you make your stand: in an alley, gym, or post office.  The draw of these locations is that there’s only one point of entrance. 

This is a strategy game, so if you position and equip your players wisely, you might just survive 20 nights of zombie attacks.

Oh.  I should point out that although it’s free to download, it only gets you through the first few nights; Zombie Defense is one of those in-app purchase deals that will cost you .99 cents to unlock the remaining nights.

Good hunting!

iTunes Link – Zombie Defense

Version 1.1

Tested on an Ipod Touch 3.1.3

Making a stand in the alley

iPhone App Reviews.net does not charge for reviews. We used to offer an unsolicited paid option called “POV” (meaning that we weren’t actively fishing for paying developers) but that has been discontinued.

The reason I’m bringing this up is that I recently got this email from an apparently angry spectator:

—–Original Message—–
Subject: iPhone App Reviews: Thanks

How I found iPhone App Reviews:

http://lonelysandwich.com/post/420825330/iphoneappreview-shakedown

Message:

…for demonstrating the fastest way to drop to absolute zero credibility.

The website featured in that “shakedown” is NOT the one you’re looking at right now. See, this website is called iPhone App Reviews.net… that’s “reviews” plural, as in more than one, and it’s .net not .com, and we don’t use “the” in our URL. I know a lot of iPhone website names sound similar, but if you ever read about an iPhone app review website charging for reviews it won’t be us.

“Thanks”,
Michael

P.S. Kudos to Sandwich Dynamics on the hilarious reply to the shakedown!

A long time ago in a land far, far away, an evil witch turned an arrogant young prince into a frog. 

The frog prince, of course, wanted to become human again, but only a fairy could help him.  Unfortunately, the fairy resided high in the sky, far above the lily pad land of the prince, though it was rumored that she had sprinkled the sky with special stars that could be followed to find her.

The Frog Prince had a special ability.  Not only could he hop lilies, he could also hop the stars.  Or at least magical ones, anyway.  So it set out on a quest to find the good fairy.

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Reiner Knizia’s Knights of Charlemagne is another great Dr. Reiner Knizia and Conlan Rios card game. Again, this is based off an actual card game that was published in 1995 to very favorable reviews. The game is themed after knights, estates and… round tables? Really, the theme is not so important because the game is pretty abstract like most of Dr. K’s games. I do love the period background music though. It’s a lute version of Scarborough Fair and it has me singing/mumbling subconsciously “parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme” all day. The newest update allows you to play your own music but I’ll be sticking to Simon and Garfunkel.

Knights of Charlemagne is a two player game that can either be played against several difficulties of AI or a second person on the same device. The basic idea is that you have ten estates in the playing field labeled 1 through 5 and colored blue, violet, green, red and orange. Each player is dealt a hand of eight knight cards, which have both numbers and colors, and plays one per turn. The knights can be played on estates with either the same number or color. The players take turns doing this until they run out of cards, at which point, the player with the most cards played to each estate, wins that estate. The different estates are worth different amounts and there are several bonuses to take into account, so all in all, Knights of Charlemagne is a pretty complex game. It definitely falls into the “easy to learn, hard to master” category.

The original card game plays with 2 to 4 players and from what I’ve read, a three person game is the sweet spot. I would love to see this implemented in the application. I guess we’ll just have to get the real life card game to experience the thrill of three player KoC. It would also be nice to play against people over the Internet, although the AI can still be pretty challenging.

Dr. K is really becoming one of my favorite game designers and not just in the iPhone and iPod Touch world. I challenge you to check out his games and not like them. Good luck. And don’t forget to throw Conlan some love as well for making these games possible on this platform.

When playing a game, the goal is to win, but it is the goal that is important, not the winning. -Dr. Reiner Knizia

iTunes Link – Reiner Knizia’s Knights of Charlemagne
Version 1.1
Reviewed on iPhone 3GS OS 3.1.3

Internet Alert, from Modern Digital Media AB, is about as straightforward an app as you can imagine. Its purpose is amazingly simple: to notify you whenever a web page is updated. 

Compression is on sale for free – normally $1.99
Compression is a snazzy, Dr. Mario – style tetris game that I reviewed a few months back.

It’s casual, fun and pretty easy to pick up and play. There’s also a new $0.99 in-app purchase that unlocks another addictive game mode. A recent update fixed some of the issues with the first version, giving you another reason why you should definitely pick up this game while it’s on sale.

iTunes Link – Compression

Version 1.1

Mole – Quest for the Terracore Gem! by Roo Games is a digging game. You play as Mark the mole and unsurprisingly, he digs. That’s pretty much all we know about Mark, as the game is pretty light on story. He’s a mole that owns a mining operation and has an unquenchable urge to find the Terracore Gem. Think “Indiana Jones and the Quest for the Terracore Gem”, but with moles. It belongs in a museum! Actually, don’t think that…

Like I was saying, Mark digs deep down into the earth or “mole planet” and finds literally tons of jewels, gems and metals. The jewels and gems pump up your score but the metals are the real treat. With these metals, Mark can upgrade his equipment. He can upgrade his pickaxe, metal and gem detector, bombs and most importantly, his airtank. The pickaxe allows him to dig faster, the detector obviously lets him see further, the bombs can blow more rocks more quickly and the airtank lets him stay underground longer. If he runs out of air down there, he has to be rescued and everything he found on that dig is lost. Yes, at the beginning, Mark is a fragile backyard digging enthusiast but as you upgrade his equipment and dig down deeper, Mark becomes a professional one mole mining operational maniac.

You find large drills at certain points during your spelunking that allow you to ride them back up to the surface instantly. This is especially helpful, because you can then use these drills to get back down to where you found them. They are basically unlockable shortcuts. There are also several different layers of soil underground and each has it’s own properties. Properties like not being able to use bombs, detector not seeing as far, or just really slows down your digging speed. These layers add some extra flavor to the world and make it exciting to keep digging.

Did I like this game? Yes. Did I beat this game? Yes. Did I play the crap out of this game? Yes. You can take it from me that Mole is fun to play. It has a great art style and very nice graphics. The digs are quick enough that you can easily sneak a few in here and there. Also, I’m a total sucker for equipment upgrades. It’s all around a very well polished game and I cannot wait to see what Roo Games does next.

iTunes Link – Mole – Quest for the Terracore gem!
Version 1.1
Reviewed on iPhone 3GS OS 3.1.3

Some apps you get, you use for about a week or two and then you delete them.  I call those my ‘one and done’ apps.  Games are a good example.  Other apps you get and use over and over again, week after week.  Social Networking apps for Facebook or Twitter are good examples.  I have about two or three apps for these that I go back and forth between, though I occasionally try out something new.

Every iPhone or iPod Touch owner should have a good Instant Messaging app and while you could simply download Yahoo Messenger, AIM, GoogleTalk, MSN, or Facebook’s individual apps and use those, who really wants to clutter up their homepages with all those app icons and suck up precious memory space?

Not me. Plus, some of those individual apps cost money.  If I’m going to pay for an app, it’s just more convenient to have everything I need in a single one.

Enter eBuddy Pro.  I have to say, this is one robust IM app.  Here are some of its features:

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Sky Force Reloaded is on sale for free – normally $1.99

Sky Force is a top-down shmup similar to iFighter and Hotfield… it’s a quality game and has its own style, and apparently it’s on sale for one day only so grab it for free while you still can! I don’t know exactly when the sale ends but it’s probably very soon.

iTunes Link – Sky Force Reloaded

When it came time to give Farm Frenzy 2 a test drive, I was- I’ll admit- kinda looking forward to it.  The description of the game sounded like it had a lot in common with a certain Facebook game involving farms:  growing grass, feeding farm animals, collecting eggs, taking produce to the market, making buildings, etc. 

The game began simply enough.  I was given a couple of chickens that had to be enticed to lay so many eggs which then had to be collected in order to proceed to the next level.  The chickens would only lay eggs after eating grass, so a barren field with a well off to the background had to be grown.  After so much grass was planted a certain number of times, the well ran dry and had to be replenished.

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ToDo/List apps tend to remind me of Goldilocks and the Three Bears.  No matter how hard I try, I can never find the perfect fit for my needs and have gone through more apps than I care to remember. 

Lists! by Secret Society Software is a straightforward To Do app that has some small, but useful features that lift it above the standard ToDo/List fare.  Since I hate swiping through dates, I really like how it can add days or weeks to the Due Date by tapping the ‘+Day’ or ‘+Week’ button.  ‘Revert’ takes me back to where I was just seconds ago and if I hit ‘Today’, it goes back to today’s date.  Priorities are marked by the number of exclamation points, from ‘-’ up to ‘!!!’.  And the app will automatically sort the ranking of lists by 5 variables.

Best of all, it’s free.  So try it.  You might find that it fits you just right.

iTunes Link – List!

Version 1.0

Tested on an iPod Touch 3.1.3

A sample list

Benjamin Franklin is widely regarded as one of America’s wisest and most innovative men.  He is credited with any number of inventions, is generally acknowledged as one of the nation’s Founding Fathers, and was a witty and insightful writer. 

In 1726, while Franklin was taking part in an 80-day ocean voyage, he developed a system of conduct focused on 13 virtuous qualities.  Ben believed that exemplifying these virtues in one’s everyday life would lead to a life of enviable conduct.  He even created a matrix that would help him to focus on one virtue each week for a period of 13 weeks. 

Ben’s Virtues is an app designed to help you benefit from Franklin’s 13 virtues.  I’d read about Franklin’s system a few years ago and was very excited to come across an app that incorporated them into a simple, easy-to-use format.  

If you’re interested in learning more, pick it up for FREE in the AppStore.  And who knows?  In 13 weeks, your life could be significantly better. 

iTunes Link – Ben’s Virtues 

Version 1.0.3 

Tested on an iPod Touch 3.1.3

Ben's chart of virtues