$3.99

Read Cult of Mac’s latest posts on $3.99:

Table Tennis Touch captures all of the fun of ping-pong with none of the humiliation

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Table Tennis Touch

I suck at table tennis. Like, it’s embarrassing.

I’m alright at serving, and I can usually return, but if anyone smashes at all or puts any spin on the ball, I fold faster than a laundry robot. I still like the idea of table tennis, though, which is why I’m glad we have video-game versions.

And Table Tennis Touch, which is out now for all of your iOS devices, is easily the best one I’ve ever played.

Monument Valley‘s Charm Makes Up For Its Lack Of Challenge [Review]

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Monument Valley
Who wouldn't want the team behind Monument Valley rethinking the way we drive. Photo: Ustwo

Monument Valley is what would happen if Fez and The Room (the game, not the movie) took place inside of M.C. Escher’s sketchbook.

Monument Valley by ustwo
Category: iOS Games
Works With: iPhone, iPad
Price: $3.99

It has a vibrant, interesting world full of impossible geometry, mysterious accusers, and bothersome crows. It’s a puzzle game and a jumpless platformer, and it’s endlessly amazing and mind-boggling to behold.

It is also one of the easiest games I’ve ever played, but that doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t check it out.

Burnin’ Out Your Fuse Out There Alone Is Even Harder Than You Think [Review]

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Out There

The cosmos has a bunch of ways to kill you, and in Out There, one of them will probably succeed. And it’s just as well, really, because I have it from a reliable source that it’s lonely out in space.

Out There by Mi Clos Studio
Category: iOS Games
Works With: iPhone, iPad
Price: $3.99

But if you insist on surviving, you’re in for a challenge because this game is as cruel and random as life itself. You play the role of a lone astronaut who wakes up from cryosleep to discover that your circuit’s dead, and there’s something wrong. And now, you’re stuck in uncharted territory with limited resources.

It’s up to you to get the stranded hero across the map, but it’s not at all easy.

Badland Finishes Day II With Night – Free New Update Brings 10 New Levels, 30 Missions

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post-256471-image-6527799a1c5c7c5cd8416ee6af70c14c-jpg

Developer Frogmind has just updated its award-winning iOS game, Badland. The update is the conclusion to the Day II story-based levels, with 10 new levels and 30 new missions to accomplish, along with seven new Game Center achievements.

The final tally, then, of levels in Badland is now 80, fully double what the game started with back in April.

Top iOS Apps of the Week

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Roman Ruins HD

Browsing the App Store can be a bit overwhelming. Which apps are new? Which ones are good? Are the paid ones worth paying for, or do they have a free, lite version that will work well enough?

Well, if you stop interrogating me for a second, hypothetical App Store shopper, I can tell you about this thing we do here.

Every week, we highlight some of the most interesting new apps and collect them here for your consideration. This time, our picks include one that’ll help you mix paint, another that will help you keep tabs on your Twitter numbers, and something for the little monsters.

Here you go:

Roman Ruins HD — Reference — $4.99 (special launch price; reg. $9.99)

If you’re a fan of ancient Rome — and who isn’t? — but can’t justify the expense to actually go and look at its old buildings, you might want to have a look at Roman Ruins HD. It’s a new iPad app that collects a wealth of high-definition pictures, virtual tours, and/or 3D overhead shots of over 350 sites. You can read all about the places, and some locations also use the app’s cool Google Street View integration to let you pretend you’re walking through them. But you’ll have to provide your own bored, screaming children, tired feet and sunburn for the full experience.

Roman Ruins HD

True Color True Color — Entertainment — $1.99

True Color is one of those apps that definitely has a practical application but is also just fun to mess around with. Its purpose is to create “formulas” for different hues so that artists can properly mix paints to match and you can easily take samples from your photos. You can also just mess around with the four component colors — red, yellow, blue, and white — to get the tone right before you go wasting all your acrylic on experimenting.

But it’s also good for curiosity. The picture over there, for example, is the exact color of Jake from Adventure Time. Did you know he was 24 percent red? Because I didn’t.

True Color

Followers on Twitter Followers on Twitter — Social Networking — $0.99 (Pro version)

Alright, maybe it only does that for me, but what Followers on Twitter definitely does is give you a quick look at your follower numbers. In addition to what Twitter will tell you, it also lets you know when people take you off of their feeds, how many users aren’t following you back, and how many you’re snubbing. You can also easily delete multiple tweets at once, and I know a guy who could probably make good use of that feature after some unfortunate late-night drunken tirades.

Oh, you don’t know him. He lives in Canada.

Followers on Twitter

Relaxia Lite Relaxia — Health & Fitness — Free ($3.99 unlock)

The App Store is full of things that play white noise or some ocean sounds to punch your ticket for the Sleepy Train to Snoozeville, but I haven’t seen one as good-looking and versatile as Relaxia. It has six noise “themes” with about eight sounds in each; you can play multiple files at once and adjust their volumes to make your own custom mix of sleep fuel, and you can set a timer so it’s not still playing in the morning.

Because it would really be awful if you woke up, thought it was raining and then it wasn’t.

Relaxia

Artpop

Artpop — Music — Free

Are you a creative, psychic Lady Gaga fan with an interest in intergalactic travel? If not, does any of that at least sound like something you’d like to see? Hey, Artpop.

It’s a slick, shiny app that ties in with Gaga’s latest album, which is also called Artpop. It’s also a social-media platform, a music player, an art creation and sharing app, and a chatroom. You create your “Aura” (read: avatar), and then you can make projects using a combination of preloaded shapes and patterns and your own pictures and share them with all the other little monsters on the app.

Plus, it’ll tell you if Lady Gaga actually looks at your creation, so it’s kind of the ultimate super-fan experience.

Artpop

‘Relaxia’ Thinks You Are Looking Sleeeeepzzzzzzzzzz

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Relaxia Lite

Relaxia — Health & Fitness — Free ($3.99 unlock)

The App Store is full of things that play white noise or some ocean sounds to punch your ticket for the Sleepy Train to Snoozeville, but I haven’t seen one as good-looking and versatile as Relaxia. It has six noise “themes” with about eight sounds in each; you can play multiple files at once and adjust their volumes to make your own custom mix of sleep fuel, and you can set a timer so it’s not still playing in the morning.

Because it would really be awful if you woke up, thought it was raining, and then it wasn’t.

Relaxia

Top iOS Apps of the Week

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Boo Halloween

Boo Halloween — Entertainment — Free

Alright, so today’s app isn’t the most practical one you’ve ever seen. It’s not even the most clever. But it’s fun and easy to use, and it’s Halloween, damn it. Boo Halloween is a quickie photo app that lets you put a variety of spooky faces on pictures of you and your friends using reasonably accurate facial recognition. It comes with six masks — four of which are pumpkins — and you can buy nine more for a dollar if you think your buddy would look better as Batman, a zombie, or Billy, the puppet from Saw. Not much to it, but it’s silly, and it made me chuckle.

Boo Halloween





BestRoute Free BestRoute Free — Navigation — Free

Now that Halloween is over, the rest of the holidays are clamoring for our attention. And some of them require shopping, which can mean a lot of driving all over town. And if you want to make sure you’re taking the most efficient route possible, you might want to plug your stops into BestRoute Free, a new app that lets you quickly and easily mark waypoints (by searching or just a long tap on the screen). It’ll then tell you the best order in which to make your stops.

It would probably also come in handy if you suddenly had to deliver a bunch of pizzas or something.

BestRoute Free



Coloring Pages for Zane Coloring Pages for Zane — Education — Free

Coloring Pages for Zane is a simple app that contains coloring-book-style pages you can send to your AirPrint-enabled printer with just a few taps before you let your little ones loose on them with all the crayons. It’s so simple, in fact, that the kids can run it themselves, and that’s by design. The developer made it for their autistic son so that he could easily print out his own pictures and get right to the important business of coloring them in. It launches with a selection of images; additional pictures are available via in-app purchases. But that warm feeling you’re getting in your heart right now is free.

Coloring Pages for Zane



Cocktail AcademyCocktail Academy — Food & Drink — $3.99

Cocktail Academy is a new app for people who would like to make their favorite drinks themselves or try some new ones without embarrassing themselves in front of their friends. It has directions to create 110 cocktails and even includes video tutorials in which international-award-winning bartender Giancarlo Di Niso shows you exactly what to do (spoiler alert: It involves a lot of measuring and shaking and/or stirring). You can search for drinks several ways including alphabetically and by percentage of alcohol, and the app even lists caloric content for each concoction for your dieting convenience. Grog, for example, has 186 calories, and I never realized I was curious about that until just now.

Cocktail Academy

Cocktail Academy Will Make You Feel Like Tom Cruise In — Wait, Nobody Remembers That Movie

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Cocktail Academy

Cocktail Academy — Food & Drink — $3.99

Cocktail Academy is a new app for people who would like to make their favorite drinks themselves or try some new ones without embarrassing themselves in front of their friends. It has directions to create 110 cocktails and even includes video tutorials in which international-award-winning bartender Giancarlo Di Niso shows you exactly what to do (spoiler alert: It involves a lot of measuring and shaking and/or stirring). You can search for drinks several ways including alphabetically and by percentage of alcohol, and the app even lists caloric content for each concoction for your dieting convenience. Grog, for example, has 186 calories, and I never realized I was curious about that until just now.

Cocktail Academy

Bit.Trip Run!: If It Ain’t Broke, Break It [Review]

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Bit.Trip Run

Developer Gaijin Games’ Bit.Trip Presents Runner 2: Future Legend of Rhythm Alien quickly became one of my favorite games this year when it launched for consoles and PC back in February. It had a lot of personality, precise gameplay, and was just challenging enough to keep you on your toes but not enough to be frustrating.

Bit.Trip Run! by Gaijin Games
Category: iOS Games
Works With: iPhone, iPad
Price: $3.99

The iOS port, Bit.Trip Run!, keeps the original’s levels, fantastic graphics, and entertaining narration from voice actor Charles Martinet (the voice of Nintendo’s Mario). So it’s mostly the same game. But it drops the necessarily accurate button controls in favor of taps and swipes for the mobile platform, and that really cuts the game down a few notches. I’d almost say that it makes it unplayable, but that’s not quite the case.

But it does take a great deal of patience to play well.

Theatricality And Deception Are Powerful Agents In Device 6 [Review]

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Device 6

It’s a little hard to describe what exactly Device 6, the new project from developer Simogo, is, exactly.

Device 6 by Simogo
Category: iOS Games
Works With: iPhone, iPad
Price: $3.99

It’s kind of a visual novel. It’s also kind of a puzzle/escape game. But it’s also its own unique animal, a challenging artistic experiment unlike anything I’ve seen before. It will confuse you, impress you, and ultimately provide one of the most memorable experiences the App Store has to offer.

So, yeah. It’s pretty good.

Ring Run Circus Is A Clever, Challenging ‘Ringformer’ [Review]

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Ring Run Circus

Everybody loves the circus, right? You know, except for the animal abuse and the crowds and the terrifying clowns? The rest of it’s alright, though: Trapeze artists and human cannonballs and food that makes you wonder why we ever bothered inventing food before we had batter to dip and fry it in.

Ring Run Circus by Kalio
Category: iOS Games
Works With: iPhone, iPad
Price: $2.99 (launch sale; reg. $3.99)

It’s in the spirit of the good parts of the big-top experience that we have Ring Run Circus, a self-described “ringformer” (like a platformer but with rings) by developer Kalio. It’s a two-button affair where you control one of three acrobats who skate around the surfaces of giant rings to pick up a key and take it to the lock to release the celebratory, end-of-level confetti.

It sounds simple, but its controls belie an intricate, complex puzzle game with impressive variety and challenge.

Tactical Espionage Office: Level 22 Brings Stealth To Work [Review]

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Level 22 03

Waking up, looking at your clock, and seeing that you’re late for work or class is one of the worst feelings in the world. In that heart-stopping instant, you feel your control over your life drop into your stomach, and all you can think about is how annoyed or mad or disappointed the people waiting on you are going to be. It’s an adrenaline-drenched nightmare of a moment in which you realize just how quickly you can put your pants on and brush your teeth, and as you bolt out the door to face your fate, you wonder why you can’t always get ready that quickly.

Level 22 by Noego Games
Category: iOS Games
Works With: iPhone, iPad
Price: $3.99

Gary, the hero of developer Noego’s Level 22, is caught in that situation, and the really bad news is that he’s been late to work so many times that if anyone sees him this morning, he will lose his job. So on top of the already stressful situation of being late, he has to sneak his way up to the 22nd floor without anyone seeing him.

That’s right: This is a stealth game about going to work. And it’s every bit as silly and fun as that sounds.