iPhone App Reviews

App Sale: Day of the Flying Pumpkins

Michael (Admin) | Oct 28, 2009 App Sale Alert, Games

User rating: (2 votes, average: 2.50 out of 5)

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Those little pumpkins fly around pretty quick, and don't forget about the timer down in the corner!

Day of the Flying Pumpkins is on sale for free – normally $.99

Pop  the pumpkins, but it’s Game Over if you touch a skull! That’s pretty much all there is to this game, but as Halloween-themed apps go it’s not bad for a few minutes of amusement.

Load it up, hand it to the kids, and tell them they don’t get to go trick-or-treating until they reach level 20 on Nightmare mode. That’ll shut ‘em up!

According to the App Store page, Day of the Flying Pumpkins is on sale “today only” so if you want it for free you should go get it right now.

iTunes Link – Day of the Flying Pumpkins
Version 1.0
Reviewed on iPhone 3G OS3.1.2

Tags: $.99, good for kids, halloween, seasonal

App Sale: All Hallow’s Eve: Witch’s Ride

Michael (Admin) | Oct 28, 2009 Games

User rating: (9 votes, average: 4.33 out of 5)

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All Hallow’s Eve: Witch’s Ride is on sale for free – normally $.99

Being a witch has never been easy, what with crazy villagers wanting to burn you at the stake and all, and now it’s even harder as you try to survive in All Hallow’s Eve: Witch’s Ride. Your job is to fly as far as you can and collect candy along the way, but there are all kinds of monsters and other weirdness getting in your way!

The more candy you can collect the better; not only does it extend your life, but if you collect enough you can use it to zap all the bad guys with a lightning strike. Some of the monsters can be dealt with by spearing them with your broomstick, but generally speaking you just need to stay out of their way.

Half Fast Games threw in Open Feint for global scoring and did a nice job on the graphics and overall production values. All Hallow’s Eve: Witch’s Ride won’t keep you busy for hours, but it’s a mildly amusing Halloween diversion… and it’s free! For now, anyway.

iTunes Link – All Hallow’s Eve: Witch’s Ride
Version 1.0
Reviewed on iPhone 3G OS3.1.2

Tags: $.99, good for kids, halloween, seasonal

MouthOff

Michael (Admin) | Oct 28, 2009 Entertainment

User rating: (3 votes, average: 3.33 out of 5)

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I’ve never been a huge fan of apps that show a mouth that you hold in front of your face, but I have to admit that ustwo has put together a pretty good app here! I mean, if you’re gonna replace your mouth with your iPhone, you might as well do it with MouthOff.

When you hold this app over your face and start talking, your selected mouth will react to your iPhone’s mic and move along with you. Naturally this means that if you have an iPod Touch you’ll need a headset & mic to get that effect… imagine what a jackass you’ll look like… but it can be done!

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Tags: $.99, good for kids, halloween, seasonal

GhostWriter

Michael (Admin) | Oct 27, 2009 Photo & Video

User rating: (No Ratings Yet)

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Scrawling evil messages across photos in blood is soooo messy! GhostWriter will do it for you, and after you take your photo it’ll even throw in some Ghoulish Miasma if you want it to.

Ghoulish Miasma is really just some weird-looking orange fog that you probably won’t want on very many of your pics (don’t worry, it’s optional), but the spooky fonts comes in two varieties, Angered Spirit and Blood Writ, and they ain’t bad. GhostWriter comes with six innocent default messages that you can select individually or at random, and if you want to really damn someone to hell you can type in your own custom message! Sweet.

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Tags: $.99, good for kids, halloween, seasonal

Treat Street

Michael (Admin) | Oct 26, 2009 Games

User rating: (1 votes, average: 5.00 out of 5)

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Need a diversion to keep the toddlers busy? Treat Street should fit the bill, for this week anyway!

Treat Street is a painfully cute trick-or-treating game where the goal is the same as in real life: ring a lot of doorbells and accumulate as much candy as you possibly can. There’s no score to keep and no possible way to lose… except for the rare occasion when a mean neighbor gives you something weird like an insect instead of candy.

You start off by choosing your costume with a 3-piece mix & match costume builder, and while you’re making your way down the neverending street you can check out your loot with the candy bag icon in the bottom right of the screen.

This is Elf Farm’s first release and they’re off to a great start with this very nicely made app. The game concept is super simple by design but the artwork and production values are awesome, and if it keeps your kids quiet for five minutes then it’s a dollar well spent.

iTunes Link – Treat Street
Version 1.0
Reviewed on iPhone 3G OS3.1.2

Tags: $.99, good for kids, halloween, seasonal

POV: MonsterABC

Michael (Admin) | Sep 14, 2009 Education, POV

User rating: (4 votes, average: 3.25 out of 5)

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* “POV” (Point of View) is a new feature that we’re testing out *

MediaBrand’s rating: 8.0
IAR’s rating: 7.0

Women tend to run away screaming when I approach and that makes it hard for me to reproduce, so in order to test drive MonsterABC I recruited the help of Ella, a sassy little four-year-old whose parents I’ve known since my first day of college back in the stone ages.

MediaBrand‘s app is a colorful learning tool that provides alphabet practice for toddlers by providing a word and an illustration for each letter as well as each word’s spoken pronunciation, plus there’s a fill-in-the-blank section where the child picks the missing letter in words like “kite” and “umbrella”. The spoken parts sound like they’re voiced by a child (good move!) and the artwork is top-notch, so I think it’s fair to say that MonsterABC has a lot going for it. It’s simple, it’s glossy, and it was able to hold Ella’s attention for waaaay longer than I was predicting.

There is, however, one major part of MonsterABC that Ella’s parents weren’t at all crazy about…

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Tags: $.99, good for kids

Puri! 2.0

Michael (Admin) | Aug 6, 2009 Photo & Video

User rating: (5 votes, average: 3.40 out of 5)

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Is it wrong for a 30-something guy to be dressing up photos with a gaudy teen-centric photo stamp app? Yeah, it probably is but I’m doing it anyway so screw you!!

Photo booths in Asia have been laying flowery, ultra-cute designs over pics for years, and I’m guessing it’s probably catching on in the western world now but to be honest I have no idea. What I do know is that the iPhone is the perfect platform for apps like Puri! where you can take a photo (or select from the camera roll) and apply all kinds of frames and stamps and text, all in the name of making them sickenly cute.

I may not be an expert in this kind of app, but I feel pretty good about saying that Puri! gets the job done and offers a pretty big array of cartoony cuteness that’s just waiting to make it onto your photos.

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Tags: $2.99, good for kids, photo editing, photo sharing

Ballerina

Michael (Admin) | May 5, 2009 Entertainment

User rating: (4 votes, average: 4.25 out of 5)

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Ok, before you start making fun of me for reviewing an app called BALLERINA lemme just say that I got curious about the “holographic effect” this app promises. That’s it! I swear! Growing up to be a ballerina was not on my list of boyhood dreams… not that there’s anything wrong with that.

So has Raptured Line successfully created an iPhone hologram? There’s a video at the end of this review, so you be the judge! Or you can grab one of the many promo codes that Raptured has generously contributed to this review, and if you miss out then you can just buy the app.

Getting back to the question of whether this app is a worthy hologram simulation, my verdict is: kind of.

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Tags: $.99, 3D, good for kids

iToy

Michael (Admin) | Apr 22, 2009 Lifestyle

User rating: (3 votes, average: 5.00 out of 5)

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iToy is one of those apps that doesn’t really warrant a lot of commentary unless you’re a diaper-pooping toddler, and from the looks of it I’d say that’s who this odd little app was designed for.

It’s basically a 3D doll thing that looks like a cross between a Teletubby and a Weeble Wobble, and you can mess with it in various ways… shake it and it makes a little cowbell noise, spin it with a swipe of the finger, press and hold to get up close and personal with iToy, and view it from any angle you want by holding your iPhone over your head or under your nose or turn it this way and that.

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Tags: $.99, 3D, good for kids

App Sale: Kids Finger Painter

Michael (Admin) | Mar 18, 2009 App Sale Alert

User rating: (No Ratings Yet)

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$1.99 Free until 3/20/09: Kids Finger Painter

I don’t have kids, but if I did I would force them to use Kids Finger Painter to paint me an exact replica of The Last Supper! It’s a watered-down painting app designed for simplicity, so if you have little ones at home it couldn’t hurt to give it a try while it’s free.

Tags: good for kids, iPhone apps on sale

Money Catcher

Michael (Admin) | Mar 16, 2009 Games

User rating: (1 votes, average: 5.00 out of 5)

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I decided to give Money Catcher a try because I like money, especially when it’s falling out of the sky… plus, the screenshots in iTunes looked pretty polished, so I figured it couldn’t be too bad.

The truth is that Money Catcher is actually pretty good… if you’re in fourth grade. It has most of the elements of a good kids game: super-easy gameplay, shiny objects, colorful scenery, and the most violent thing that happens in the game is when the little kid riding on the money-catching truck says “Ow!” when he catches something he shouldn’t.

Pretty much all you do in Money Catcher is tilt your iPhone left and right to “catch” whatever’s raining down from above. Actually don’t really need to catch, all you need is for any part of the truck to touch objects to consider them caught.

You can choose to catch money, gift boxes, fruit, or jewels, and mixed in with the goodies are both good surprises and bad. Some of the good things will put more time on the game clock, restore some of your character’s life, and speed up the little truck he’s driving. The bad things will take the life meter down a notch, cause him to go in reverse (so tilting left makes him go right), and freeze him in place for a few seconds while precious treasure hits the ground around him.

There’s no global scoreboard, but that’s probably not a big deal since little kids usually don’t have big-kid egos to feed, but it would definitely be nice if Thumb Country would make the game respect the iPod if it’s running. The game would also benefit from some music or something other than repeated “ding!” noises every time points are scored.

Money Catcher’s overall production value is good and the artwork is nice but, like I said, this is a kids’ game. If you have a small child who’s constantly stealing your iPhone in search of amusement, Money Catcher is probably worth the $.99 price tag. Otherwise, just move along… nothing to see here!

Tags: $.99, good for kids

Q&F: iMatcher

Michael (Admin) | Jan 6, 2009 Entertainment, Quick & Free

User rating: (5 votes, average: 4.00 out of 5)

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iMatcher’s self-described purpose is to “calculate your personal compatibility with another person according to your name number”. That’s nice even though I don’t know… and don’t care… what a ‘name number’ is, but I think it would be a little more appealing to just say hey kids, this is a fun app to play around with at slumber parties!

The funny thing is that iMatcher’s iTunes App Store description goes on to claim that “a sound logical basis is used for calculation” and that the app “enables you to quickly exclude unsuitable people and avoid negative experiences”. HA!! Come on now. You punch in two names and the big red heart fills up based on whatever formula webgearing ag has built into the app. It’s mildly amusing for me and probably wildly entertaining for 14 year old girls, but I really think iMatcher needs to stop taking itself so seriously.

78%!!!! They should buy like 10 more babies cuz they gonna be 2gether 4ever! <3

Tags: free, good for kids