@app-review Articles on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog

Daily iPad App: League of Evil 2 proves platformers and touchscreens can play nice

by Mike Schramm (May 25th, 2012)

There are a lot of awesome games on sale in the Because We May event going on this weekend, but of the titles I've picked up so far, League of Evil 2 is probably my favorite. It's a platformer title, in the vein of Super Meat Boy, in that it's basically a quick and simple romp through a series ...

Daily iPhone App: Burnout Crash smashes with style

by Mike Schramm (May 25th, 2012)

I don't really care who you are or what kind of games you like. You should go to the App Store and buy Burnout Crash for 99 cents because it's on sale right now. Done? Great. Now I'll tell you what the game's about. Criterion Games typically makes console games, most notably the Burnout ...

Star Walk and Solar Walk apps now track the Space X Dragon

by Mel Martin (May 24th, 2012)

The two bestselling astronomy apps, Star Walk and Solar Walk for iOS, can now find and track the Space X Dragon, the first commercial vehicle to visit the International Space Station. The Dragon was launched Tuesday. When you search for the spacecraft, you'll see it's current position. As I ...

Platter: novel photo-sharing social network for keen cooks

by Richard Gaywood (May 24th, 2012)

How do you launch a social networking site in this day and age, long after the likes of Facebook and Twitter seized the world? One answer is "micro-social networks": designed with a clear and specific purpose in mind, they can fulfill that purpose better than any of the generalists like ...

Daily iPhone App: Elenints matches Triple Town's planning with a few new tricks

by Mike Schramm (May 23rd, 2012)

Red Fly Studio is the group behind last year's great Inertia: Escape Velocity. Its latest title, Elenints, is more abstract. The name "Elenints" might come from a combination of the words "elements" and "integers". It's is a puzzle game where you place pieces on a board, trying to match up ...

Daily iPhone App: Siegecraft lays siege on the App Store

by Mike Schramm (May 22nd, 2012)

When Siegecraft was first released on the App Store (by Crescent Moon Games, who have made some really amazing titles over the past few years), I remember it being marketed as "Angry Birds in 3D." And that description kind of works -- you are indeed flinging various weapons (though not of the ...

Daily iPhone App: Dark Legends takes Spacetime's formula to the next step

by Mike Schramm (May 22nd, 2012)

Spacetime Studios has made quite a name for itself with its popular mobile MMOs, Pocket Legends and Star Legends. The company was originally founded to make full-scale PC MMOs like World of Warcraft, but when the plug got pulled on a big project, Spacetime had to go back to the drawing board ...

QuickSearch PDF Reader provides powerful fast text searches

by Erica Sadun (May 21st, 2012)

If you're someone who does a lot of work on the road, and needs to reference PDF source material, you'll find that QuickSearch PDF (US$4.99) from Olive Toast Software is the tool you didn't realize you needed. It has one job to do -- to help you find information inside large PDF files -- and it ...

Daily iPhone App: Sonic the Hedgehog 4 Episode 2 brings Sonic back again

by Mike Schramm (May 21st, 2012)

The big question with Sonic games is always if it's as good as the old titles on the Sega Genesis and the Dreamcast, and as usual, the answer here with Sonic 4 Episode 2 (yes, that's how they're releasing these) is unfortunately no. But that's not really a bad thing -- this is pretty good 2D ...

Earthlapse is a window on the Earth from space

by Mel Martin (May 20th, 2012)

Earthlapse is a beautiful US$0.99 app for iOS that gives you an International Space Station view of the earth moving below. There are 8 time lapse scenes of weather, docking spacecraft and aurora in high resolution that is almost lifelike. You can control the speed of the movie, superimpose ...

DropKey app encrypts Mac files, free through Sunday

by Steven Sande (May 18th, 2012)

WellRed Apps launched its DropKey file encryption app for Mac last month, but realized that there's one issue with gaining widespread acceptance -- it takes two to tango, and it takes two copies of DropKey (one each for sender and recipient) to send files securely. The company had been giving ...

Daily iPad App: Feed Me Oil HD

by Mike Schramm (May 17th, 2012)

Chillingo's Feed Me Oil was released a little while ago, and it's a solid game that didn't get a ton of press when it first dropped. The reason for that is probably because it's somewhat similar to Where's My Water, in that you're trying to get a fluid simulation into a certain place on the ...

PopCap finally releases Bejeweled HD on iPad

by Mike Schramm (May 17th, 2012)

Bejeweled is probably the most popular mobile game out there, but for some reason, PopCap has never actually released it officially on the iPad. It's been out on the iPhone before, and of course you could play it on Apple's tablet, but it has never run natively. Until now, that is -- PopCap has ...

Daily iPhone App: Amoebattle does RTS right

by Mike Schramm (May 17th, 2012)

Most takes on real-time strategy for the App Store have to corrupt the form in some way, yet some still turn out well (see Total War Battles for a a great RTS game that takes a different turn). But Amoebattle impressively does RTS as you expect it. You choose units, send them around exploring, ...

Daily iPhone App: Ozgood is a lovable piece of puppet tech

by Mike Schramm (May 15th, 2012)

Ozgood is an interesting little iPhone game from a few developers who've worked for bigger game companies, and have recently gone independent. Most iPhone games deal with the platform's hardware by either just going with 2D graphics or trying relatively simple 3D -- it's usually only bigger ...