Ranch Rush
T.J. Brumfield | Jul 20, 2009 Games
User rating: 
(6 votes, average: 4.50 out of 5)
(6 votes, average: 4.50 out of 5)
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My mother is addicted to playing Farm Town on Facebook these days. As I was downloading Ranch Rush from FreshGames, my thoughts immediately turned to games like Farm Town and Harvest Moon. Both those titles have mass appeal, but I find playing both to be a chore. Thankfully Ranch Rush turned out to be a different kind of beast.
Sure, this is a farm simulator in the strictest sense. You plant crops, harvest them, and run a farm. However gameplay is not open-ended, nor very time consuming. The story of the game centers on Sara and Jim, who have eight weeks to save their business. Sara gets the idea of starting a farmer’s market to raise the necessary funds. If she can’t raise the money in eight weeks, greedy developers take over Jim’s Flower Nursery where they both work.
Tags: $1.99, Games, simulation, T. J. Brumfield
EffectsLab
T.J. Brumfield | Jul 19, 2009 Photo & Video
User rating: (5 votes, average: 4.40 out of 5)
(5 votes, average: 4.40 out of 5) Loading ...
This review is also due to a request. My wife wanted me to find her a good photo app for adjusting images on her phone. This site has reviewed apps like LOMO Camera and ToyCamera, which are designed for a very specific purpose. I’ve also come across a few designed more for entertainment purposes, transposing part of your picture with another image. What she wanted was something practical. The iPhone doesn’t have a flash. If she is taking pictures with her phone, she wants the pictures to turn out well.
Christopher Comair’s EffectsLab comes to the rescue. EffectsLab adjusts images. There are no toys or gadgets. There are no extraneous bells or whistles. There isn’t even a splash screen. You open the app, open your image and adjust it. Perhaps the app won’t wow you over with splashy graphics or polish, but this swiss-army knife of image filters gets the job done when it counts.
Tags: $1.99, Photo & Video, photo editing, T. J. Brumfield
Shuffle Ball
T.J. Brumfield | Jul 19, 2009 Games
User rating: 
(2 votes, average: 4.00 out of 5)
(2 votes, average: 4.00 out of 5) Loading ...
I remember fondly my youth as I would pour over Nintendo Power magazines while drinking Jolt cola and watching Alf. Okay, looking back it doesn’t seem nearly as awesome. But in those days I often played computer and arcade games that featured simple vector graphics aping at 3D. Some of these games were supposedly 3D versions of pong, or table tennis, where I’d hit a ball (often an ugly vector creation) with my neon-colored paddle, bouncing it to a computer opponent. Homestar Runner’s Strongbad Zone plays upon this if you are curious what I’m talking about.
Ibis Inc. also recaptures that classic look and feel with Shuffle Ball. We live in a retro-generation where everything that was deemed no longer cool is suddenly cool again. So certainly there is an audience for older gamers who want to revisit their youth, or younger gamers who are curious about these so-called classics us grumps can’t stop yapping about.
Tags: $0.99, Games, T. J. Brumfield
FingerBeat
T.J. Brumfield | Jul 19, 2009 Music
User rating: (3 votes, average: 5.00 out of 5)
(3 votes, average: 5.00 out of 5) Loading ...
I have the music talent of William Hung. And frankly I might be insulting William Hung with that comparison. But the Elionze Group have put together a music app simple enough for even me to make music, yet powerful enough to put together some great loops, exactly how you want them.
I’m talking about FingerBeat. At first I was expecting a fairly simple finger drum app. With some apps I download and play with from the App Store, I have to lower my expectations when it comes to features. I have to remind myself that this is a cheap app often made by a single developer, or a small team in a short period of time. FingerBeat is one of the rare apps I’ve downloaded over the past few weeks that really exceeded my expectations when it came to features.
Tags: $3.99, Entertainment, Music, T. J. Brumfield
Woxel – Updated with more promo codes!
T.J. Brumfield | Jul 17, 2009 Games
User rating: (7 votes, average: 4.14 out of 5)
(7 votes, average: 4.14 out of 5) Loading ...
I’m deleting Scramble from my iPhone. I know, I know. Zynga makes great games. Scramble in particular is great. But you have to understand. I just downloaded Woxel from Half Fast Games. Woxel is a 2D game that is displayed in 3D with some shabby textures. It doesn’t look as clean as Scramble. It doesn’t have the multiplayer that Scramble has. And yet, I am deleting Scramble none the less.
Why would I delete a great game for one that doesn’t offer multiplayer? I’m glad you asked. If you didn’t, I wouldn’t have much of a review to write. Woxel takes a familiar letter-combination game and adds unique twists to it. In the end, the game is better and I enjoy playing it more.
Tags: $0.99, Games, puzzle, T. J. Brumfield, Word
Paint Studio
T.J. Brumfield | Jul 17, 2009 Entertainment
User rating: (2 votes, average: 4.00 out of 5)
(2 votes, average: 4.00 out of 5) Loading ...
There are some amazing iPhone artists out there. Some were even featured in the New York Times. I’m not one of them. In fact I butcher and do great disservice to stick figures. That being said, Marie wanted a review on Paint Studio. So Marie is getting a review of Paint Studio.
Impetus has put together a simple paint program that is very easy to use. It doesn’t have complex brush types such as Brushes (the app that was featured in New York times, and used to draw a cover for The New Yorker) but it does have a few unique features. It also costs 40% of what Brushes costs.
Tags: $1.99, Entertainment, paint, T. J. Brumfield
Leaf Bound
T.J. Brumfield | Jul 17, 2009 Games
User rating: (4 votes, average: 3.50 out of 5)
(4 votes, average: 3.50 out of 5) Loading ...
Not many people know, but Mario was originally called Jumpman in Donkey Kong. Later he became the Italian plumber we all know and love. There was another classic game called Jumpman back in 1983. Well, Leaf Bound is here with a girl named Yuri who would like to inherent the Jumpman crown. All Yuri does is jump. She jumps when she breathes. She jumps when she sleeps. And when she wants to jump, she jumps some more.
I think you get the point. In this game, you don’t even have to do anything to jump. Jumping is a given. It is inherent, and intrinsic law of the Leaf Bound universe. All you do is swipe your finger from left to right to control the direction Yuri is jumping in. Along the way there are Mecha-Monkeys. And if there are Mecha-Monkeys, it is also inherent that there will be Mecha-Monkey Mayhem. You learn to expect such behavior from robotic primates.
Tags: $0.99, arcade, Games, T. J. Brumfield
Flit
T.J. Brumfield | Jul 17, 2009 Social Networking
User rating: (4 votes, average: 3.75 out of 5)
(4 votes, average: 3.75 out of 5) Loading ...
OpusApps has put together their second offering called Flit. Flit is a new social networking concept with an interesting proposition. You have something to say, but you don’t have an audience. You’re not Ashton Kutcher, and you don’t have a million Twitter followers. Maybe you are Ashton Kutcher and you’re looking to take over every social network on the planet. Frankly, who is going to stop him?
Flit’s concept is that messages are simply thrown in the cloud for anyone to see. Except in this case, messages are pretty butterflies. Each butterfly has a color which denotes the category of the message. If I want to view a message, I tap the butterfly. Upon reading the flit, I am prompted to vote the flit up or down. Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: $1.99, social networking, T. J. Brumfield
Pipe Mania
T.J. Brumfield | Jul 16, 2009 Games
User rating: (3 votes, average: 4.67 out of 5)
(3 votes, average: 4.67 out of 5) Loading ...
Razorwork’s last title ever produced was Pipe Mania for the iPhone. Unfortunately Razorworks disbanded last year after completing the project. It is especially unfortunate given how solid this port is. Robosoft now owns and sells the title.
Pipe Mania is a classic title that as been around 1989. The first version I played was called Pipe Dream. I assumed Pipe Mania was a remake/clone of Pipe Dream. I didn’t realize that Pipe Mania was actually the original title for the franchise. For those who aren’t familiar with the basic concept, You have a game board, which in this case is 10×8 squares. On each of these squares, you can place a piece of pipe. There is a queue of pipes on the left and you must place them in the order they appear randomly. The pipes must go together in one contiguous piece.
Tags: $4.99, arcade, Games, puzzle, T. J. Brumfield
Nintaii – Updated with more promo codes!
T.J. Brumfield | Jul 16, 2009 Games, Uncategorized
User rating: (3 votes, average: 5.00 out of 5)
(3 votes, average: 5.00 out of 5) Loading ...
Edit: This app is on sale, 50% off until July 26th. That explains the lower price than what I’ve seen previously.
This may be my new favorite game on the iPhone, edging out Stoneloops! of Jurassica (which Swain also loved). Time will tell how well it holds up. Simply put, Concrete Software’s Nintaii is brilliant in its simplicity. So many games I play are rehashes of gameplay I’ve seen somewhere else. I’m shocked that I’ve never played a puzzle game exactly like this before.
The Japanese term ‘nintai’ means patience, perseverance, or endurance. Reading other’s peoples reviews and comments, I half expected the game to frustrate me with its difficulty. In reality, the calm colors and music seem to sooth me even as I attempt to unravel difficult puzzles. Gameplay consists solely of flipping a block around a level to its destination. The block itself is two squares long, or tall depending how it is flipped.
Tags: $1.99, Games, logic, puzzle, T. J. Brumfield
Balloon Animals
T.J. Brumfield | Jul 15, 2009 Games
User rating: (4 votes, average: 4.00 out of 5)
(4 votes, average: 4.00 out of 5) Loading ...
I just got done spending time blowing up cop cars, and brooding with fellow undead, so the logical next move was to play with balloon animals. I’m glad you’re following me here. In all seriousness, I have a wonderful three-year old daughter. While I’m a little reticent about letting her play with the phone, I do enjoy finding apps I can play with her.
For the sake of comparison, while evaluating Balloon Animals from UFO Interactive Games, I also checked the free version of Balloonimals from IDEO Toy Lab. In short, I thought Balloon Animals was a much nicer app all around.
Tags: $0.99, Games, kids, T. J. Brumfield
High Speed Chase 2.0
T.J. Brumfield | Jul 15, 2009 Games
User rating: (2 votes, average: 3.00 out of 5)
(2 votes, average: 3.00 out of 5) Loading ...
I kept playing this game all day long. I didn’t keep playing it because it was addictive. I kept playing it because I was convinced there was more here to see. I really wanted to like this game. I assumed perhaps that under various layers of onion there was something else besides another layer of onion. What I discovered is that I was playing a 99 cent app. This game isn’t terrible. Far from it. I just felt like somewhere there was a five dollar app hiding in here. I see massive potential. Instead there is a very simple, very repetitive game.
The first time I fired it up, I selected a mission and began to play. Or I attempted to play. I wasn’t sure exactly what I was supposed to do because the game made no effort to tell me. As I ran over orange power-ups, they said to swipe cars. So I did. I ran into cars, quickly died and started over. I did this a few times until I realized that swipe didn’t not mean swipe with my car. I can swipe the other car with my finger and move it out of the way when I get one of those power-ups. They are the only power-up in the game.
Tags: $0.99, Games, racing, T. J. Brumfield
