iPhone Apps Weekly Digest: Abstract Gaming, Great Art Tools and a Fantastic Google Reader Client

By

Left: Reeder. Right: Fox Vs Duck.
Left: Reeder. Right: Fox Vs Duck.

It’s time for our weekly digest of tiny iPhone reviews, courtesy of iPhoneTiny.com, with some extra commentary exclusive to Cult of Mac.

This time, we review Fox Vs Duck, GW Monkey, National Trust, Photogene, Reeder, and TinyPixels.


APP OF THE WEEK
Reeder: Superb Google Reader client. Elegant, usable UI + image caching, state saving & services integration. 5/5 $2.99 https://is.gd/blPVj

Fox Vs Duck: Beautifully designed tilt-based ‘avoid’ minigame. Simple, but fun & great attention to detail. 4/5 $0.99 https://is.gd/bblZg

GW Monkey: Modern take on Nintendo’s G&W Chef game. Polished, but dull & comes off as rather charmless. 2/5 $1.99 https://is.gd/blQkk

National Trust: Handbook for Eng/Wales/NI NT sites of interest. Sleek & efficient, but content sometimes lacking 3/5 Free https://is.gd/blQvO

Photogene: Intuitive, usable app for basic image edits (crops, levels, etc). Naff filters, but otherwise great. 4/5 $1.99 https://is.gd/blQI3

TinyPixels: Pixel art creator. Iffy pan/zoom, but otherwise good toolset, incl. copy, grid, art import/export. 4/5 $1.99 https://is.gd/blRvv

Only six reviews this week, but four great apps among them. TinyPixels is a decent editor for pixel art, for the most part bettering equivalent desktop apps, despite iffy zoom/pan controls that mean both tend to happen at once. Photogene’s a nifty image editor for basic tasks such as cropping and level adjustment. Edits are non-destructive, and while the built-in filters are poor, the rest of the app makes it well worth two bucks.

Fox Vs Duck was the best game I reviewed this week, and it again shows how versatile the platform is. The game is simple: tilt your device to make your round duck escape the pond, fleeing from the hungry fish and avoiding the fox. It’s elegant, fun, surprisingly moving when you lose a duck, and you know full well it just wouldn’t get any kind of chance on a rival platform.

App of the week, though, has to be Reeder. The 2.0 upgrade to the popular Google Reader client has upped the app’s game significantly, and it actually ousted Messages for a permanent place on my dock. If you use RSS/Google Reader with any kind of regularity, you need this app—it really is that simple.

For a daily dose of mini iPhone app and game reviews, follow iPhoneTiny on Twitter, or visit iPhoneTiny.com.

Newsletters

Daily round-ups or a weekly refresher, straight from Cult of Mac to your inbox.

  • The Weekender

    The week's best Apple news, reviews and how-tos from Cult of Mac, every Saturday morning. Our readers say: "Thank you guys for always posting cool stuff" -- Vaughn Nevins. "Very informative" -- Kenly Xavier.