Check out the latest and greatest in apps for your iOS device with our monthly app roundup.
Bumpy Road
It’s an arcade-based love story.
Don’t let the tagline above deceive you, this is a really fun game. It has that perfect blend of interesting graphics, cute story, and -- most importantly -- innovative game-play.
The premise is that you and your love have decided to go for a drive. The car is perpetually propelled eastward, but rather than controlling the car, you control the ground it drives upon. By touching the ground you raise it, causing the physics-based car to bounce off of the road or speed up/slow down, allowing it to avoid pitfalls and collect bonuses (for points).
There are two game modes available: Evergreen Ride, where you drive through a neverending, dynamically generated landscape collecting memories (naw) until you either run out of fuel or fall into a water-filled pit. The gizmos littered in your path provide you with fuel, and -- if you collect enough -- will trigger a pit-free turbo mode.
The other mode, Sunday Trip, is also dynamically generated, but comes with a finish line that you must reach as fast as possible. There are no pitfalls, so just try and collect as many bonuses as you can to speed up your car or reduce your time.
It’s the complete experience of Bumpy Road that really makes it memorable and certainly one of the standout apps on iOS.
$2.99 > Simogo > Get it here
Flight Control Rocket
Flight Control Rocket is the follow-up game to Flight Control, but with a few new features that set it apart. As in Flight Control, the object is to direct the many on-screen ships to their respective, colour-coded landing pads, while avoiding collisions.
It adds the ‘rescue’ game mode, where you have to go pick up stranded, colour-coded astronauts, as well as 10 new motherships and four new bots (read: bonuses). With cute 60s-themed graphics and music and enjoyable, challenging gameplay, it’s worth the trip.
99c > Electronic Arts > Get it here
Tochki Online
Sometimes I have a nostalgic pang for the days spent up the back of my maths class, drawing doodles or playing games on grid paper.
I’m not about to try and recreate that experience in RL, however – I’m sure Ms Crabtree won’t appreciate the 20-something year old giggling up the back of her classroom – so I was quite happy to find the classic surround-your-opponent’s-dots-with-your-dots schoolbook game: Tochki. It’s simple to learn, with adorable ‘real world’ graphics – and there’s no need to dig out your old schoolbooks to play.
Free (Ad-supported) > Manera > Get it here
Frameographer
I love stop motion/time lapse videos but if you’ve ever tried doing it yourself, it quickly becomes obvious that it’s very tedious work.
Boom! Frameographer makes it easier. As stop motion takes so freaking long, Frameographer is designed to allow you to come back to sessions, picking up at the frame you left off. It also makes reviewing frames a snap -- deleting the erroneous ones -- and allows you to choose the desired frame rate before you export it as a movie.
$2.99 > Studio Neat > Get it here
