Friday App Wrap

iOS App of the Week: God of Blades

The work of swords-and-sorcery artists such as Boris Vallejo, Julie Bell, Frank Frazetta and Gerald Brom will be familiar, even if you've never heard those names before. Gracing the covers of hundreds of fantasy novels (Vallejo painted the iconic 1960s art for Conan the Barbarian, for instance), the style is broodingly otherworldly and atmospheric.

It seems strange, therefore, that no one had used it as a basis for a fantasy game — which is exactly what God of Blades has now done, and the end product is appropriately epic. Drawing inspiration from the aforementioned artists, 1970s prog rock and high pulp fantasy, the game is a perfectly-realised iOS expression of all three. You play a long-dead king who has arisen to fight the invading hordes in a 2D auto-side-scroller. As you run along, you swipe the screen in different directions to perform a variety of attacks, all set to a magnificent soundtrack.

In the US — we haven't tested it here — you can also unlock cool weapons by visiting public libraries. In theory, we think that's a wonderful idea.

Platform: iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad
Price: AU$2.99

Super Monsters Ate My Condo

Monsters Ate My Condo (MAMC) is a bit hard to explain to anyone who hasn't played it. There are buildings. They fall out of the sky in pieces. You feed the pieces to monsters (preferably of corresponding colours) without letting the building topple over. One of the monsters is a giant crab. Another one is a giant unicorn. They get mad. There's a Brunhilde and a Japanese geisha finger. While this goes some way towards explaining the utter mad brilliance that is MAMC, you just can't know until you've experienced it for yourself.

This week, PikPok released the sequel: Super Monsters Ate My Condo. It's everything about the first game, but made even more super, with new combo blocks, a chocolate wheel and ... hats. So many hats. We suggest you go check it out.

Platform: iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad
Price: AU$0.99

The Last Express

In 1997, Prince of Persia creator Jordan Mechner released The Last Express — an art nouveau-styled point-and-click adventure, played out in real time and set in 1914 on the Orient Express. The game was hailed as excellent, but due to company problems, saw a very limited release. Now, it's been faithfully ported for iOS — and it's great. Because how you play the game affects how other characters act, its replay-ability is enormous — and you can even rewind the game to play scenarios differently. One caveat, though — the download is 1.25GB, so make sure you have enough space before buying it. Yikes.

Platform: iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad
Price: AU$5.49

Spacecraft 3D

I've been having far too much fun with this app. It lets you put NASA spacecraft in the room with you. Print out the AR card (PDF), position your iDevice's camera and snap away. There are a variety of craft to choose from — Curiosity, Grail, Cassini, Voyager, Dawn and Juno — but Curiosity is the best, because the others all appear with a grid beneath them. Still, snapping pictures of Curiosity rolling over my cat will never get old. Never.

Platform: iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad
Price: Free

ClimateWatch

If you've ever seen a strange bug doing something equally strange and thought, "Oooh, what a strange bug, I should tell someone about it," ClimateWatch is an app that lets you do just that! Every bird, bug and flower you see, you can record using this app, using a handy index to identify what it is you are looking at. Once you've recorded your sighting, you can submit it to the ClimateWatch team, who are studying how climate change is affecting Australia's native wildlife. Pretty neat, huh?

Platform: iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad
Price: Free

Camera+

An alternative camera application for iPhone, Camera+ has updated with some really nifty new features that add support for iPhone 5 and iOS 6 iPad, with a bunch of new iPad-only features. Now the app has iCloud sync, so your photos are synced across Lightbox; when you open your iPad, you can sync your pictures, and then use the iPad's new editing features to gussy them up. These include filters and adjustments, of course, as well as a handy new spot-editing tool that allows you to target the parts of the image you want to fix. There's also Facebook support for easy sharing, and to celebrate, it's on sale for just AU$0.99. Woo!

Platform: iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad
Price: AU$0.99

Android app of the week: IntelliScreen

IntelliScreen is one of the coolest useful apps for Android we've seen in a while. It allows you to control your screen's time-outs, creating custom settings for a variety of applications. Looking at recipes on a web browser? You can set the phone not to switch the screen off when you're running that application, for example. You can also set an "always on" position that uses your device's accelerometer to detect when you want your screen to stay on, set it to turn the screen off if the phone is in the dark (eg, a bag or pocket) using a light detector (pro version), and it has a useful screen lock widget that can lock your screen with a single tap.

Platform: Android
Price: Free

Weather Eye

Clean up your weather interface with Weather Eye. It's pretty simple: it contains 12 very minimal weather icon sets that are as simple — and eye-catching — as the app itself.

Platform: Android
Price: Free

Voxel Invaders

This is Space Invaders, but not quite like you've ever seen it before. That is, you've seen the two-dimensional shooty with the descending ships raining laser fire from above, but one of the power-ups in Voxel Invaders shifts the perspective from third- to first-person. For a game that already plays well — and Voxel Invaders is very smoothly made — it gives the familiar gameplay a really cool new boost.

Platform: Android
Price: AU$2.45 (Lite version available)

Velocispider

Speaking of Space Invaders having surgery, there's also … Velocispider. It's not necessarily the gameplay that will hook you here, but the awesome 16-bit graphics and the dude you control. It's like space invaders, but instead of a little space fighter, you have the Velocispider. Which is exactly what it sounds like. Part velociraptor, part spider, with a little laser cannon on its little head, protecting its little eggs from the evil robot corporation. Awwww!

Platform: Android; iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad
Price: AU$0.99 (Android); AU$2.99 (iOS); (Free for Android; Free for iOS)

Healthy Weapon

The problem with fighting games is that they're not exactly ideal for the touchscreen interface. Swiping and tapping is all well and good, and they play okay, but it's not the best. Healthy Weapon is a game that is looking for a new way to do things, and it succeeds nicely. Instead of swiping and hoping your hits connect, it gives an array of four buttons down each side (they're the same buttons, it just allows you to use both hands), which you can tap in various configurations to attack your opponent. The double array also means that you can have two-player battles on the one device, which is pretty cool.

The premise of the game is likewise fun — you and your opponents beat each other up with fruit and vegetables. And we love the visual design.

Platform: Android
Price: AU$0.99 (Lite version available)

Rayman: Jungle Run

Last week, we absolutely loved Rayman: Jungle Run for iOS — it's iOS arcade gaming done right, hitting a stellar balance between simple and challenging gameplay. A week later, the limbless one has arrived on Android, too.

Platform: Android; iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad
Price: AU$2.95 (Android); AU$2.99 (iOS)