Readers’ App Reviews – March 2015

March is here, and so are your latest app reviews!

As expected, you guys filled up my inbox with great app submissions, so I’ve been busy playing with all your apps. There are some really cool ones this month.

This month we’ve got:

• A party game to call out your friends
• A powerful 2D animation tool
• A math game that will test your mind
• And naturally, much more!

Read on to see some fun, unique, and powerful apps made by readers like you.

Lastronaut

Lastronaut is one of the last humans on earth, running for their life to board the final rocket leaving the planet. And its simply beautiful.

Running in an adrenaline fueled haze with rockets and shotguns abound, you’ve got to dodge everything the sentinel army can throw at you. New weapons fall from the sky as gifts from the heavens to help you fight your way to the last rocket.

Controls are simple: jump and shoot with simple taps. GameCenter integrations makes sure you can brag to your friends as you expect. And there are an array of achievements to keep your running after your life is safe.

• Author: Darrin Henein @darrinhenein
• Most useful tutorial: How To Build a Monkey Jump Game Using Cocos2d 2.X, PhysicsEditor & TexturePacker – Part 1
• App Store Link: Check it out!

Creature

Creature is a new tool made by professional animator with experience animating hit movies such as Wall-e, Up, TS3, Brave.

Creature is designed to make complex and gorgeous animations out of static 2D images.

Creature has a ton of tricks. With skeletal animations you can give your character life and generate an entire range of movement. With physics simulations those skeletons become even more real as your tails bounce and your arms swing.

Creature also overs a variety of mesh deformations allowing even static images to flex and breath. As if you didn’t have enough at your fingertips, Creature supports motion capture from your camera to allow you to record your own movements and mimic them in your character animations!

Creature supports plenty of formats such as videos, gifs, sprite sheets, and image frames. It even has built in support for a number of popular game engines including Cocos2D, Unity, and more.

• Author: Jiayi Chong @KestrelmMoon
• Most useful tutorial: Cocos2D-X Tutorial: Making a Universal App: Part 1
• App Store Link: Check it out!

Cozy City

Cozy City is a unique puzzle game that leaves your planning a neighborhood with a variety of predetermined tiles.

The game begins by giving you a blueprint of tiles required for your city. You must use them in order on the grid below to build a city that satisfies the blueprint. No road can simply end cut off, it must end with a house or grass. Forks in the road must be managed carefully as they immediately send you down interesting paths.

Cozy City doesn’t always have one right answer, instead you’re left to solve the puzzle in your own way. Even how you pay can be up to you whether its careful upfront planning or a see as you go style. 50 levels should keep you busy as you decide if your next career will be city planner.

• Author: Nick Domenicali @dominsbeard
• Most useful tutorial: Intermediate Design Patterns in Swift
• App Store Link: Check it out!

Schemes

Schemes is an enormously powerful URL builder that takes advantage of iOS URL-Schemes to build unique and customizable workflows between applications.

Schemes can open other apps, take data from one app and send it to another. Really the sky is the limit as each app can supply its own actions and data that other apps can use. Schemes acts as the middle man by organizing those actions and allowing you to chain them into workflows.

Since any app can open up a URL-Scheme to enable communication between itself and other apps, Schemes will continue to expand as more and more apps take advantage of this powerful library.

• Author: Craig Pearlman @blackfog
• Most useful tutorial: Storyboards Tutorial in iOS 7: Part 1
• App Store Link: Check it out!

Makan Kaki

How many times have you and a few friends tried to setup an outing and simply can’t agree on a place or a time? If you’re like me, it’s many many times.

Makan Kaki is designed to solve that problem. The app allows you to create an event and invite your friends. Then everyone can suggest and vote on venues and times. The venues are sorted by votes and also offer reviews, directions, and a gallery of photos. Suggested a date makes it easy for friends to decide if they have the day available and vote accordingly.

You can login using Facebook to invite your friends, but you can also roll without an account. Makan Kaki will generate a URL for you share with friends as you please. When they open the URL they’ll be prompted for the app if they don’t have it, and if they do they’ll be taken to the event without the need to login either.

Push notifications will keep you updated on your friends updates as you finally manage to plan a painfree outing.

• Author: Zhengquan Qin
• Most useful tutorial: Learn To Code iOS Apps With Swift Tutorial
• App Store Link: Check it out!

Dice Mogul

Dice Mogul is a fun twist on a real estate board game.

Dice Mogul lets you build a proper empire as you circle the board a few times. As you circle you have the chance to buy properties. Once you own a property you can of course upgrade it to increase the damages when an opponent lands on it.

A large variety of powerups bring extra excitement and often mean flipping the tables on your opponents repeatedly. The available powerups include stealing a property, upgrading your properties, shielding from payments, and more.

Dice Mogul brings memories of monopoly nights with my family. Here’s to hoping a GameCenter multiplayer update lurks around the corner. ;]

• Author: Rob de Lara @OverTheTopGames
• Most useful tutorial: How to Save your Game’s Data: Part 1/2
• App Store Link: Check it out!