Note: This article originally appeared in the Cult of Mac Newsstand issue, Game On!. Grab yourself a copy or subscribe today.

You’ve heard of them: the heavy hitters. The mobile games so big, so profitable and so frustratingly popular that you refuse to play them out of spite. Or you do play them, and you genuinely enjoy them, which is also totally fine.

But we’re all about self-improvement and actualization here, so here are a few alternatives you might consider instead of those gaming equivalents of high-school quarterbacks.

Note: This article originally appeared in the Cult of Mac Newsstand issue, Game On!. Grab yourself a copy or subscribe today.

Most video games transform you into a warrior, a thief, a space alien or race car driver. A new breed of games aims to make you a better person by putting you in the shoes of a young father with a son dying of cancer or playing the part of someone grappling with depression, immigration or sexual identity issues.

Called “empathy games,” they hope to change one of the most often criticized aspects of these beloved pastimes: that they foster violence and isolation. Game designer Jane McGonigal’s widely read 2011 book “Reality is Broken” set the playing field for a world where games reward good behavior and nice guys finish first.

InstaPhotoBlend – Photo & Video – $1.99

If you’ve ever looked at two of your photos and wished that you could somehow transmogrify them into one Frankenphoto, you might want to check out InstaPhotoBlend. It’s image-editing software for your iOS device that uses a simple interface to let you combine and blend two photos together. You start by selecting two pictures — one top layer and one bottom layer — and then fiddle around with the controls to control opacity and adjust color until you’ve created the perfect thing that used to be two things. After that, you can post your masterpiece to social media, email or text it, or just hang onto it until the time is right. It’s a fun little app to play with, and it’s not hard to create some interesting effects.

InstaPhotoBlend

Whether this feature has been in iOS since the beginning or not, this is the first I’ve heard of it, so I’m guessing there are a few of you out there that haven’t found the sleep timer in iOS, either.

If you want to listen to music or audiobooks before you go to sleep, it’s generally a good idea to have a way to turn the music off after you’ve fallen asleep, right?

Well, it turns out that there’s a sleep timer right in iOS itself, but it might not be where you’d expect it to be.

The Hulu Plus app for iOS has been updated today with support for Google Chromecast. You’ll find a new ‘Cast’ button within the app that will stream your favorite shows to your television with the help of the $35 dongle.

“We know you’ve been enjoying the Hulu Plus app on Chromecast with your Android phones/tablets and iPads over the last few weeks. Today, we are excited to add the Chromecast integration for Hulu Plus to your iPhones.”

The addition of Chomecast integration will finally give iPhone users the ability to use their app as a custom remote. From the Hulu Plus ass you can control videos on Chromecast connected to your TV while also browsing the app on your iPhone to queue up your next choice. The update is available for free in the App Store.

Source: Hulu

Here at Cult of Mac, we’re just starting our coverage of iOS and Mac games, as our fearless leader Leander told you in the publisher’s letter for the inaugural edition of our Newsstand magazine.

Since we’re just starting up, it’s pretty easy to get our attention when it comes to promotional emails and review requests. While we can’t review all the games we’re sent, we do read all the promotional emails that you’re sending our way.

Even still, we’d be lucky to review even a minuscule percentage of games we get requests for, so there are a few things that you can do to guarantee that we’ll take a closer look. There are a few more than you can do to make sure we don’t look much closer, too.

Here’s a list of both extremes, to help guide you on your way to getting coverage on Cult of Mac.

With this latest Halloween-flavored update, Kingdom Rush: Frontiers is bringing vampires and werewolves to its acclaimed tower defense gameplay in a new update, entitled Shadowmoon.

You’ll get three brand spankin’ new levels to defend your base against nine new enemy types, including scary vampires and vicious werewolves (oh my!). The update will go live on All Hallow’s Eve itself, so get ready for some Halloween fun after you fill your pillow cases full of loot from your local neighborhood.

Here’s the brand new trailer to whet your appetite.

Over the past couple of months we’ve seen tons of concept designers dream up ideas of what Apple’s smartwatch might look like, but this concept iWatch GIF by Thomas Bogner is one of the best ideas we’ve seen yet.

Old people like me grew up with Choose Your Own Adventure books. This occasionally ridiculous series introduced an entire generation of children to both the importance of choice and the oddball nuances of second-person narrative.

Following in that tradition is the Gamebook Adventures franchise, which adds a dice-driven, role-playing-style combat system to its branching fantasy storyline. The eighth entry, Curse of the Assassin, is out now; it’s a slow-paced, text-heavy, epic beast of an experience.

So basically, it’s everything people love about those books.

BlackBerry announced this morning that its BlackBerry Messenger app for iPhone will be available later today, but you’ll have to wait in line before you can use it.

After a disastrous attempted launch last month, the company says it has fixed all the server issues caused by a leaked BBM APK for Android, but to ease into the cross-platform launch it is implementing a waiting system where iPhone users download the app, enter their email address, and then wait for an email notification that you can finally use BBM. 

“We still have a lot to cover,” is Apple’s promise this time around. On October 15th, the company sent out press invitations for a media event that will be held at the Yerba Buena Center in San Francisco this coming Tuesday, October 22nd.

Last month we saw the unveiling of the iPhone 5s and 5c, and this second event is expected to center around new iPads. But that’s not all; the future of OS X, iOS 7, and the Mac are also rumored to be waiting in the wings.

Here’s what to expect from Apple’s October 22nd event:

Did Jony Ive design iOS 7 in Microsoft Word to win a bet at the bar? Almost certainly not, but he could have. Every single one of the new iOS 7 icons — including the more intricate ones like Game Center, Maps, and Stocks — can be recreated almost perfectly in Word.

Vaclav Krejci demonstrates the whole process in the video below.

SEGA has today announced its mobile games lineup for the coming months, with a number of notable new titles heading to Android and iOS.

Highlights include a revamped Sonic the Hedgehog 2 — which will be available on Android for the first time; Sonic & SEGA All-Stars Racing Transformed, and a rhythm franchise that originally made its debut on the Nintendo DS.

Boost Mobile has today confirmed that as of November 8 it will become the third prepaid carrier in the U.S. to offer the iPhone 5s and the iPhone 5c. The news comes almost a month after posters advertising the devices on Boost Mobile were leaked.

You know all those menubar items in the upper right hand corner of your Mac’s screen? The ones that–from the right–probably show the Notification Center, Spotlight, your user name, the date and time, your battery level, and so on?

Did you know you could move those things around (most of them, anyway)? Did you know you could even take some of them off of the menubar altogether? Here’s how.

Apple isn’t the only consumer electronics giant hosting a major press event tomorrow. Nokia is also gearing up to make a number of big announcements at Nokia World in Abu Dhabi, and they won’t all be new Lumia smartphones.

The Finnish firm is also expected to unveil a Windows-powered iPad competitor with a 10.1-inch 1080p display — pictured above and below — and a new music player called the “Nokia Guru” that hopes to take on the iPod shuffle.

Samsung looks to be preparing its own extended warranty plans that will provide additional coverage for its smartphones, tablets, and other consumer electronics, according to a new trademark registered with the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office.

Called “Protection Plus,” the service is expected to offer the same kind of protection that is available to iPhone, iPad, and iPod users with AppleCare+.

Apple’s obviously not going to rest until all of their appshave gone flat, and the next obvious contenders are the icons for Apple’s App Store apps, including the iWork suite, iPhoto, iMovie and Garageband. But what will they look like? Wonder no longer: Apple accidentally leaked their new icons on the official built-in apps page for the iPhone 5s.

Will Apple unveil the Retina iPad mini on Tuesday or won’t they? There’s been a lot of back and forth on this vital point in the past few weeks, but now, the big boys are weighing in, with The Wall Street Journal affirming that Cupertino will indeed unveil a 2048 x 1536 version of it’s 7.9-inch tablet tomorrow.

The iPhone 5s has been in limited supply, and according to many accounts, the iPhone 5c is in limited demand. But September has still been a huge month for Apple. How huge? According to one study, Apple’s share of the U.S. smartphone market has doubled in September.

What is the point of the iPad now that the iPad mini is on the cusp of going Retina? It’s Apple’s pro device: the iPad for people who want a tablet to replace their laptops, not just be a more fully-functioning e-reader.

Why is why the latest rumor to come down the pipes makes a lot of sense. It says Apple is intending on launching its own keyboard cover for the iPad at tomorrow’s event, a la the Microsoft Surface.

Eye-Fi has just added a new 32GB model to its Mobi card lineup. This means that you can now shoot for days and then, when you decide to transfer all those photos to your iPad, iPhone or Mac, sit for another few days as the pictures are sent across via Wi-Fi.

While the highlight of Apple’s press event on Tuesday will undoubtedly be its new iPads, we were also expecting the Cupertino company to announce a new Apple TV. But a new report suggests the fourth-generation set-top box has been “delayed a bit,” and that it won’t be ready for tomorrow’s event after all.

Pencil is the name of a new stylus coming from FiftyThree, the makers of the rather lovely Paper app for iPad. If the hardware shown in the FCC filing is anything to go by, then it is a design as practically minimal as the Paper app.

Buying an iPad case on the eve of an Apple iPad event is probably not the smartest thing to do, but if any case can tempt me it’s this gorgeous Folio from Dodocase. At the very least, it’s got me hoping that any new iPad minis have the exact same dimensions as the current one. In short, the Folio looks to be the perfect marriage of old and new tech.