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 Card Shark Solitaire Free, DigiDrummer Lite, Dog Piano Jr, easyBeats LE, Met Office, Revs!, Rudolph’s Kick n Fly, Spoke Groove Machine Free, Trace, and Twin Blades.
APP OF THE WEEK
Trace: Charming platform game with excellent time-attack/infinite lives mechanic and ‘drawable’ platforms. 4/5 Free https://is.gd/8qFoB
Met Office: UK weather app. Decent info, but iffy UI, no caching, and no support for multiple locations. 2/5 Free https://is.gd/8qG5g [EDIT: Support for multiple locations exists via favorites. However, the general poor nature of the app means the score is unchanged.]
Twin Blades: Side-scrolling hack ‘n’ slash. Gorgeous graphics, but little variety means it soon bores. 2/5 $0.99 https://is.gd/8qPfT
Dog Piano Jr: Good-looking piano that emits dog noises. Drives pets nuts, but zero longevity. Price is right… Free 2/5 https://is.gd/8qOLt
Rudolph’s Kick n Fly: Rare Donut Games mis-step. Cute catapult game too reliant on luck & therefore frustrating. 2/5 Free https://is.gd/8qQ3i
Revs!: Disappointing top-down racer. Plenty of tracks & great graphics, but little sound and excitement. 2/5 $0.99 https://is.gd/8qGAs
easyBeats LE: 16-pad drum machine with 4 loopable/recordable bars. Save/ringtone features via 99-cent purchase. 4/5 Free https://is.gd/8qRrQ
DigiDrummer Lite: Competent 8-pad virtual drumkit with three patch sets but pointless/useless recording feature. 3/5 Free https://is.gd/8qQlT
Spoke Groove Machine Free: Turntable-based drum machine. Innovative, but lack of quantise spoils beats. 2/5 Free https://is.gd/8qUq9
Card Shark Solitaire Free: Polished 8-game collection. Great, bar slightly iffy controls. Sol Free a tad better. 4/5 Free https://is.gd/8Ix0z
Two apps vying for App of the Week this time. easyBeats LE is a decent little drum machine, providing both tab-based live playing and simple sequencing. However, Trace charmed me more and is another app dispelling the notion that platform games suck on Apple handhelds. While Trace looks like it was designed by a three-year-old with a crayon fixation, it’s a fun game that cunningly does away with lives and replaces them with a time-attack mechanic—in other words, finish each stage quickly to climb the leaderboards.
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