Readers’ App Reviews – March 2015
App reviews for apps made by fellow readers in March 2015, including a party game to call out your friends, a powerful 2D animation tool, and much more! By Ryan Poolos.
Pivots
Pivots is a new puzzle game with a dash a math.
Before I send you running for the hills, the math isn’t that complicated – and remember math isn’t scary!
With a grid of numbers, when a row totals 15, its eliminated then your timer and score are increased.
You play by rotating, or pivoting (get it?!?), numbers in groups of four. Simple drag your finger starting on one number and create a square of four numbers. They will rearrange allowing you to position numbers as you please.
You only get 60 seconds to best your highscore. Pivots without a row of 15 will cost you time. Each removed row gets you some extra time. As you advance the game will get faster and you’ll get score multipliers to take you to new heights.
- Author: Derek Clark @clarky07
- Most useful tutorial: How to Make a Game Like Candy Crush with Swift Tutorial: Part 1
- App Store Link: Check it out!
Pin Circle
Pin Circle is a delightfully simple timing based game made for casual play.
The premise is simple. There is a circle spinning in the middle of the screen that has a few pins in it. You’ll have a number of pins to add. Simply tap and the pin will hit the circle at the current location. Your mission is to get all the pins stuck to the circle without any overlapping pins.
The game will change directions, speed up, adjust patterns, and more to complicate the game. With over 400 levels you shouldn’t have a problem staying busy a while.
- Author: Duc Nguyen
- Most useful tutorial: Sprite Kit Tutorial: How to Make a Platform Game Like Super Mario Brothers – Part 2
- App Store Link: Check it out!
WeathAR
WeathAR is perhaps the most unique weather app yet.
WeathAR doesn’t simply have a list of locations with cute icons. No, that wasn’t good enough for WeathAR.
Instead, after entering a few locations you frequently want the weather for, you can simply point your iPhone in that direction and WeathAR will use your GPS and compass to choose which city to tell you the weather for.
WeathAR is a delight to use with its playful animations and unique Augmented Reality interface. You’ve certainly never checked the weather like this.
WeathAR uses date from Forecast.io so you should find it helpfully accurate and up-to-date.
- Author: Shaun Merritt
- Most useful tutorial: iOS 7 Best Practices; A Weather App Case Study: Part 1/2
- App Store Link: Check it out!
Files Board
Files Board is a powerful file browser and organizer for your iPhone and iPad.
Files Board will let you browse, organize, and store files on your iOS device covering photos, documents, videos, music, etc. It checks all the important features like folders, filtering, searching, favorites, copying, etc. It also supports zip files as well as uncompressing them, even encrypted.
Files Board as has a really cool pro feature that turns your iOS device into a local webserver for your network and allows you to update files over the air from your Mac. A must have for anyone transferring files from their Mac to their iPad for presentations and such.
- Author: Bohdan Hernandez
- Most useful tutorial: Grand Central Dispatch In-Depth: Part 1/2
- App Store Link: Check it out!
Callouts
Callouts is a party game you and your friends will love.
Callouts is simple: you and your friends join a local game, then questions are asked to the group. They’re simple questions always about the group of people playing. So it could be something like “Who’s the goofball?” Everyone picks their answer and then the game reveals to everyone who was the most selected.
The covered answers that lead up to the big reveal lend to the tension in the room as everyone chuckles to themselves about the question. Careful with all that chuckling though because the next question could be about you. >;]
- Author: Roy Hermann @calloutsapp
- Most useful tutorial: Image Processing in iOS Part 1: Raw Bitmap Modification
- App Store Link: Check it out!
Honorable Mentions
Every month I get more submissions than I can handle. I give every app a shot, but I can’t write about them all. These are still great apps made by readers like you. Its no a popularity contest or even a favorite picking contest. I just try to get a glimpse of what the community is working on through your submissions. Take a moment and checkout these other great apps I didn’t have time to showcase properly.
Flight Tracker
shapesly
Greenchick 2
Matching Shapes
RainMM
Boob-Tube
Coubbles
First Draw
Coloria
Angle Clash
Kill Sector
FaceDash
Magic Wanda
Pregnancy Recorder Pro
Color-Pong
Know – Social Proximity
Where To Go From Here?
Each month, I really enjoy seeing what our community of readers comes up with. The apps you build are the reason we keep writing tutorials. Make sure you tell me about your next one, submit here!
If you saw an app your liked, hop to the App Store and leave a review! A good review always makes a dev’s day. And make sure you tell them you’re from raywenderlich.com; this is a community of makers!
If you’ve never made an app, this is the month! Check out our free tutorials to become an iOS star. What are you waiting for – I want to see your app next month!