1st Impressions

iAye is a neat game.  If you remember the old Space Trader on the Palm platform (my son and I were beta testers for that one), this is a more graphical version of Space Trader in which you are not just a galactic trader, but a pirate.  It’s the perfect game for those that observe Talk Like A Pirate day as all the prompts and such are written in pirate lingo.  I have to say though that I like the pun of the game’s name more than I do the pirate talk.  My poor reading comprehension since my disability suffers in the translation department.  This probably isn’t an issue for the normal player though.

Basically, your goal goal in the game is to trade and pillage until you get a sizable fortune and control your galaxy.  Along the way, you hire a crew, upgrade your ship, and become more and more powerful.

If you would like to try the $1.99 game, no download is even necessary.  Just visit the iAye web site with your iPhone and play it online.  You may just find that it is a game that you can’t live without.

Chroma Quest is not your normal “match three” game that the iTunes store is full of.  I mean come on…just how many of those does Apple need to give us of those while turning down cool apps that actually add finctionality?  But I digress.

Chroma Quest adds a new spin because you don’t just match pieces, you combine them…their colors, that is.  Adjacent pieces with primary colors can be combined to form the mixture of the two.  For example, you can combine red and yellow to make an orange piece. When you tap two primary colors, the first one combines with the second and clears the spot where the first one used to be.  As if that isn’t unique enough, you can also “split” the orange, green, and purple pieces into their primary colors.  For example, if you tap on an orange tile and an adjacent red one, it “splits off” the red from the orange and combines it with the original red one…effectively switching the places of the red and orange tiles.

All these combinations and splits come in real handy when trying to clear the board.  You do this by tappling on two adjacent tiles of the same color.  You can also clear sequences of greater than two by selecting the first tile in the sequence, then selecting the last tile in the sequence.  If you can clear all the pieces from the board, or all but one piece, you can advance to the next level.  This $0.99 game comes with an unlimited number of levels, so running out of game play will never be a problem.  Because of that and the unique game play for an excellent price, I have to recommend this game.  It makes my Must Have list.

This is one cool app. It’s basically a multi-layered multi-color digital spirograph. Everything from the width of the pen to the number of loops can be configured by increasing or decreasing the shown value by tapping the left or right side of the screen. When you get a design you like, you can save it to the background and add something new on top if it.

There is a free version you can play with, or a Pro version available for $1.99. It adds a lot of additional functionality like ability to save your designs so you can share them our use them as wallpaper. For some examples of what this app can do, check out the Trochoid Pro Gallery.

If you like math, fractals, or any kind of computer generated art, check out this really cool app. It’s a keeper.

RoboSnake3D takes the old Snake game to a whole new dimension – literally.  This snake not only grows as you progress through your game, but you can climb up on boxes and even go under or over yourself.  I typically don’t like those timed games where you are under pressure to act fast, but I found this one addicting.

The game has also taken on a high-tech feel as well.  The head of the snake is called the “central processing unit”.  ”Eating” power-ups called “batteries” are required to power additional “expansion units”.  This, on top of the 3D nature of the game play really brings this game into the 21st century.  This $0.99 game has excellent graphics, excellent music, excellent game play, and is definitely worth a buck.

Shape Escape

Shape Escape is a twist of the old Sokoban game.  Your character is this cute little gray elephant.  You use the arrow keys to push around colored drums and make them fall into the same colored holes.  Once that occurs, both the drum and the hole disappears.  To make the game a bit more of a challenge, it has a bit of a “maze” type board layout.  The game gets more complex as you contine as you end up with both drums and blocks.  And if that didn’t complicate things enough, if you push something into the wrong colored hole, it gets stuck.  You have to start the level over.

If you do not want to use the arrow keys in the bottom corner, you can turn on an option to overlay large arrows on the game board itself.  The game is very responsive to input..sometimes a bit more responsive than I expected and I would end up moving a block too far.  For this reason, I recommend that you play some in practice mode until you get accustomed to it.

The game has almost 200 different levels and costs $2.99 in the iTunes store.  A free/lite version is available to check it out.  If you do happen to make it through all the levels, you can always go back through and try to beat the stored personal score of how many moves it took you at each level.  If you like Sokoban type puzzle games, I recommend giving this one a try.  The changes to that familiar concept will be refreshing and provide you with many hours of game play.

If you would like to see the game in action, here is a YouTube video of the next version of Shape Escape.

As you may have noticed in my reviews, I like puzzle games. CounterBalance is a unique puzzle. It comes with over 100 unique levels. The goal is to turn all the red disks green by placing new disks on the board. Sounds simple. But in order for a disk to turn green, the combined distance from it to other disks on the same row and column has to add up to the number on the disk. Obviously, the more disks on the board, the more complex it is going to be. Getting this right is going to provide quite a bit of game play. This makes the $0.99 game well worth the price.

I have to admit, this game surprised me, and that doesn’t happen often. From the very start, the graphics and sounds were top quality. At this price point, I was expecting something that *looked* inexpensive. This doesn’t.

The game play is simple. Start out by choosing the length of the string to search for and the number of colors to use. Obviously, the more you choose, the more difficult it will be. Once game play starts, it shows you a pattern string and you try to match it in the honey-comb grid of colored hex shapes. The faster you find the match, the more points you get. Power-ups and other extras give the game an additional twist and chances for additional points. .

Unlike my last game review that did not quite make it as my first Must Have game review, this one deserves the honor. Usually, games meet or fail to meet my expectations. This one exceeded them. The application description is not exaggerating when it says you will be hooked immediately.

A lite version is available for free, but skip a download and go right for the full version while it is on sale for $0.99. It’s worth every penny of that and more.

Imazing is Amazing!  If you like puzzles, this is one of those simple ones that you will just keep coming back to.  The game consists of 36 different levels (more added later?).  The object is to “pocket” all the green balls in the maze without “pocketing” all the red ones.  The top ten scores are saved for each level.  This isn’t really one of those timed games that make you feel pressured, but the time is kept as a score.   In other words, you can relax…which is why you play games anyway, right?  You can always re-visit a previous game and try to beat your high score.  And, if you want to get real creative, you can try to achieve the goal of pocketing all your green balls and none of your red ones.

The simplicity of this game is one of its best features.  I would offer some suggestions though.  First, if would be nice if there was a help screen that gave the rules.  While the rules are simple, not everyone that picks up my iPhone to play with it is going to realize the different goals for the balls of different colors.  I’d also love to see it save my sound settings and not ask me every time the game is launched if I want sound or not.  The game has a nice menu that lets you see high scores, clear the high scores, re-start the maze, and so forth.  I wish that the game showed the top score on the screen for any completed maze that you were re-doing though.  I also wish there was a “restart” button at the top of the screen.  It’s only a couple of taps away, but I think it would be a nice addition.   Finally, I’d love it if the maze selection screen indicated the mazes that have been completes and the ones that have not.  It would also be cool if it scored completed mazes not only on the time it took you to finish, but the number of moves and how many red balls you had left.

Overall, this is really a nice puzzle.  It is definitely worth the $0.99 price.  And, if more levels were added and some of my suggestions, it might just make it into my Must Have category.  I don’t have any games with that tag yet, but this one comes mightly close.

I’ve had PDA’s since the very first 500k US Robotics “Pilot”…even before the became “Palm Pilots”.  One of the first applications I look for on a PDA is a nice Bible program.  Depending on the platform I was on, I usually ended up using BibleReader from OliveTree or MyBible from Laridian.  For the iPhone though, there is really no contest.  BibleReader is the only way to go.

BibleReader is a free download from the iTunes store, or you can purchase it with a favorite translation.  The free version comes with two of the free translations.  It has several Bibles available for free on their web site (over 25)…along with a huge library of devotionals, commentaries, cross-references, Christian e-books, and so forth.  Other translations and books come at a cost, usually in the $15-$25 range depending on the size and liscensing involved.  Once purchased online, the iPhone app “syncs” with your purchased library and downloads the purchased books (or any of the 80+ free ones) directly to your device.  OliveTree has over 250 total iPhone resources available.  No monthly subscriptions.  No need to find a wi-fi or 3G signal in your church.  It’s all on the handheld once it is downloaded.  And navigation could not be simpler.  Tap “verse”, the book, the chapter, and the verse.  Four taps and you are there.

BibleReader has bookmarks, word search, and a history pane of what all verses you’ve visited in which translations.  Future versions will include verse highlighting and personal notes.  The most recent version added the ability to open two books in a split screen.  For example, you can have the ESV Study Bible in one pane, while the other holds the NASB with Strong’s numbers and popups to the Hebrew and Greek words and their definitions.  In other words, the study notes are not tied to the translation it came with.  Here is a short video that gives you a little flavor of what I’m talking about with study notes and split screen.  In case you haven’t guessed yet, this one makes my Must Have list.

This app is a very feature-rich and complex budget and expense tracking program. If you are looking for a simple checkbook, this isn’t it. It tracks transactions in cash accounts as well as assets and liabilities with support for multiple currencies. Detailed reports and graphs are also available. My personal finances are too simple to justify this $10 app, but it has great reviews on iTunes and you would be hard pressed to find a more complete financial app. While I may end up using something simpler, I am at least going to go through the training profile tutorial to see if I can make it work. I really do like the graphs and recommend this app to anyone interested in knowing everything about their finances and financial worth.

Special thanks to Jerad and The App Podcast for the promo code for this app.