Ever wanted to be Captain Kirk? In Star Command you play the captain of a starship. You build it out, hire crew, run missions, and fight battles. The retro-style graphics work well, and you use simple controls in battle rather than confusing 3D simulations. The story is fairly straight-forward, but it is well worth the price.
The Simpsons: Tapped Out is a variation on the long-term city-building game. But it is made especially for Simpsons fans with lots of sarcasm and references to characters and places. You are building your own Springfield, starting with the Simpsons’ house and street. Like other games of this genre, building takes time so you have to either play a bit each day or buy in-app purchases to speed things up.
The iPhone and iPad are wonderful devices for using maps. But almost all map apps require a constant and strong data connection. What if you are using your wi-fi iPad out of range, or traveling away from your data provider, or simply sitting on a plane or in an area without coverage? ForeverMap is a simple map app that has one great feature: you can download and store street-level maps and access them offline. The downloads do take up a bit of space on your device, but that’s to be expected.
The latest app from CleverMedia (MacMost parent) is Just Word Search for the iPad. You can choose a set of random words from the dictionary, a preset word list based on a theme, or enter your own list of words. You can also alter the puzzle size, colors and background. You can even decide whether words can be diagonal and backwards. Like most of CleverMedia’s games, this one is free.
Here’s a fun way to enjoy your music. The game Synesthetic takes any song from your Music app and builds game level around it. You simply tilt your devices left and right to avoid obstacles on a track as the song plays. It’s very colorful, even psychedelic.
Apple’s Cards app is a handy and fairly inexpensive way to send customized real-world cards to family and friends. You select a template and add your own photos and text. It only costs $3 to send a card inside the U.S., cheaper than many store-bought cards. And there are some nifty features like GPS location integration and the ability to send cards to multiple recipients, even after the original has been sent.
Here’s yet another game by MacMost’s parent, CleverMedia. Push Around is a puzzle game for those that want a tougher challenge than what is offered by most iOS puzzle games today. It could literally take weeks or months to play through the 100 levels in the game. However, learning how to play is simple: you move a robot around and push boxes into place. No complex controls to learn, no huge list of rules and complicated move combinations to master. Just push.
I’ve recommended many other Google apps before, but recently the one at the center of it all, the search app simply called Google, has been getting a lot of attention because of its superior voice recognition to Siri. While that one feature is impressive, it doesn’t quite replace Siri, which wins because of the variety of things it can do. Still, it is certainly worthwhile having the free Google app on your iPhone as it gives you nice voice web search ability and lots of built-in mini apps like Gmail and Google Calendar clients. You also get Google Goggles, which lets you search by taking a picture of an object.
Days is a photo diary app. You take pictures of things as you go about your day and it creates a little collage of images that tells the story of your day. You can then share it with others, or just use it for yourself. It has an interesting feature where you can take several pictures in a short timeframe and it will make them into an animated GIF.
Forty Thieves Solitaire the latest iOS app from CleverMedia (MacMost parent). A simpler version of this app has been out for years and is one of CleverMedia’s most popular. This new version has Arabian Nights-themed cards, Game Center high score boards, and scales to work on all iOS devices in both horizontal and vertical orientation. If you have never played Forty Thieves before, give it a try. It is similar to standard solitaire, but uses two decks and once you learn how to play you can win more often.
KitCam is a camera app that combines useful features like different shooting modes and sharing options with fun features like lens effects and frames. It gives you the option of seeing effects applied to the live image before you take a picture, or applying it in editing mode after. It also includes some interesting shooting options like multiple exposures, a timer, multi-shot and time lapse. Some of the effects are in-app purchases, but enough are included for free to make it worth the initial purchase.
Ever wanted to memorize a famous poem? Or perhaps you need to do it for school. Poems By Heart is a simple app that turns memorization into some mini-games. You can even track your process and record your efforts. It comes free with two poems, and then you pay for small packs of new ones.
When you start playing Little Inferno, it seems like a quirky little game toy where you obtain objects and burn them. But then when you reach level 2 you find out that it is actually a very dark, sinister game. You find out you are playing in a dark fantasy world. And in fact, Little Inferno is social commentary on mindless tap-and-wait game apps. Very weird but satisfying.
Here is another one of my own games. Poke Squares Solitaire is a game that should appeal to both poker players and solitaire players. It is a traditional game of poker solitaire where you place 25 cards in a 5×5 grid to build 10 hands of poker. You are awarded points based on the value of the hands. The game is hooked into Game Center, so you can compare your best score with your friends.
Block Fortress combines a reverse tower defense game with a Minecraft-like environment. You must build your fortress and defend it against the onslaught of enemies. You also get to control a fighter during attacks, adding a shooter-type game into the mix.
Curious as to which apps use the most power on your iPhone? Carat seeks to find out. It slowly samples energy use on your iPhone to provide you with a report showing apps that use a lot of power. While other apps that claim to do this actually only look at your installed apps and then make an education guess, Carat gathers data (it takes at least a week to give you your first report).
I’m not into running, but I’m thinking about it thanks to the iPhone app Zombies, Run! It is essentially a physical fitness app for tracking your runs. But it also motivates you by allowing you to pretend that you are being chased by zombies. It will interject apocalyptic news reports and zombie sounds into your music while you run virtual supply missions.
Here’s something I’ll bet you didn’t know your iPhone could do: make floor plans by just using the camera and some taps. With MagicPlan you stand in the middle of a room and use your iPhone’s camera to create a floor plan by simply indicating the locations of corners and doors. The result inside perfectly accurate, but pretty close. You can add rooms and do your entire house or office.
With the Oscars coming up this weekend, it might be fun to pretend you are part of Hollywood with the simple but fun interactive adventure Stardom: Hollywood. You start at the bottom, unemployed and behind on your rent. Then you make choices and complete quests to facilitate your rise to stardom.
