Welcome to the Apps Blog's weekly roundup of new iPhone and iPad apps, hand-picked from new releases in the last seven days (and the odd pearl that slipped through the net in the last month).
The roundup includes apps and games, with the price in brackets relating to the initial download only – so those marked (Free) may be freemium, using in-app purchases.
There's only one word for this animated animals children's app: delightful. Created by author and illustrator Christopher Niemann, it's a collection of hand-drawn animals for kids to interact with through swipes and taps, and is fizzing with character, craft and humour.
iPhone / iPad
iPhone / iPad
Yogify is a mobile yoga app aimed at beginners and veterans alike, with more than 50 classes and 275 yoga poses to practise. Photos, audio instructions and social features aim to get you bending and stretching just so, with the classes sold as in-app purchases. The publisher may be a surprise too: games firm EA.
iPhone
PopCap Games – now a subsidiary of yoga giant EA – had big hits with Plants vs Zombies and Bejeweled Blitz on the App Store. Solitaire Blitz is cut from the same cloth as the latter, boiling the familiar card game down into 60-second rounds, with Facebook connectivity enabling players to challenge friends. In-app purchases push the action along if desired.
iPhone / iPad
If you missed this week's annual Very Hungry Caterpillar Day (yes, it's a real thing) this app may be a good way to belatedly celebrate. Based on Eric Carle's famous children's book, it presents kids with five scenes to decorate with 57 digital stickers of characters and items from the book – as well as other Carle titles full of creepy-crawlies.
iPhone / iPad
This is the latest app hoping to help children learn to read – in this case, through phonics-based stories about a group of cartoon monsters. Its educational principles are impeccable (albeit based on the US rather than UK curriculum) while its mixture of storytelling and colourful mini-games offers entertainment rather than just education.
iPad
As concepts go, this one's rather marvellous: an endless runner game starring a pixelly Indiana Jones clone – but where you play as the boulder rolling after him. Or, as developer TwinSky puts it, a "roll reversal". Ouch. But yes, the game's retro graphics, "metric ton of unlockables" and four modes should provide plenty of fun.
iPhone / iPad
Parents of younger (or sensitive) children may wish to give this retelling of Little Red Riding Hood a miss, what with it being based on an undead corpse with an eye missing. Older kids will love it, I suspect: scary in all the right ways, with excellent production values. A creepy treat.
iPad
Publisher Big Fish Games apparently spent a year and $1m making Fetch, which is a bold move given the ferocious competition on the App Store. It looks very impressive though: a well-crafted adventure game with aliens, robots and a lost dog named Bear.
iPad
Monster World may just be the most well-known game in this roundup: publisher Wooga says 50m people are already playing it on Facebook. This is a completely separate game though – the two don't synchronise – but the gameplay is similar. Your job is to grow a garden, complete quests and visit friends, with in-app purchases available to speed things up.
iPhone / iPad
Free-to-play driving games are big business judging by CSR Racing and Real Racing 3, even if they can also be controversial. Nitro is the latest at the starting line, offering a familiar blend of street-racing and car customisation, including real-time multiplayer racing and – yes indeed – in-app purchases for keener petrolheads.
iPhone / iPad
"Here's How You Can Easily Create Mobile Apps Without Knowing Anything About Programming!" (affiliate link)
Glide – Instant Video Messaging (Free Apps)
Glide – Instant Video Messaging (Free Apps)
There are quite a few startups betting on video messaging being the next big breakout category on the App Store. Glide is the latest with its app that aims to combine "the personality of video chat with the convenience of texting". The idea being to ping videos to friends, and chat live if they're online and available. Facebook provides the social connectivity.
iPhone
Something more serious here: an app that brings the architectural terms from Sir Nikolaus Pevsner's Buildings of England book to your iOS device. More than a thousand are included, with line drawings, images and map locations for relevant buildings. "From abacus to zigzag via dosseret, hoodmould and squinch..."
iPhone / iPad
Freckleface Strawberry is a character dreamed up by Hollywood star Julianne Moore for a series of children's books. Now she's on the iPad, with an app that offers a story as well as a monster-making section for kids to create their own beasts and share them with friends and family.
iPad
Gameloft's Order & Chaos games have found a wide fanbase on iOS and Android alike. Now the company has used its fantasy franchise to leap on board the card-battler bandwagon. This game involves collecting more than 250 cards, sorting them into decks and then fighting other people online. The publisher promises "Accessible gameplay. Deep strategy". Hopefully it'll nail both – many mobile card battlers, although popular, aren't as accessible as they might be.
iPhone / iPad
More social video, but this is entirely live, and broadcast "from one phone to many, from anywhere at anytime". The idea being that you follow other people (in the app, not in real life, please) and then get notified when they're broadcasting live. The App Store listing hints that celebrities, athletes and musicians could use it to broadcast to fans in the future, too.
iPhone
Sound platform AudioBoo has been around for a long time now, but it has a brand new iPhone app – replacing the previous one rather than simply updating it – for browsing and listening to other people's "Boos", and recording your own.
iPhone
Initially rejected by Apple when it was about the conflict in Syria, a name-change later and Endgame:Eurasia has been approved for App Store distribution. It aims to explore "modern war" as you try to bring a rebellion to a successful conclusion. Any Big Brother connotations in the new title were presumably diplomatically ignored by Apple's review team this time round.
iPhone
In many ways, 2013 should be veteran games developer Jeff Minter's time: goats are the top trending animal on YouTube, after all. Known for his furry-animal focus and some of the best-loved games in the 1980s, he's been working on a steady flow of iOS games in recent times. Goatup 2 stars, yes, a goat – leaping around a series of platform levels eating, swimming and farting. A level editor lets you create your own challenges for friends too.
iPhone / iPad
For many people, the be-all and end-all of having "fun with photos" is Instagram. Still, for those looking for a new photo-editing fix, Pixies may be worth a look. It's a way to quickly slap text and digital stickers onto your photos then share them to social networks – or turn them into physical products (t-shirts, mugs, mousemats etc – via a partnership with Zazzle.
iPhone
I get the sense book character Little Critter may be better known in North America than on this side of the Atlantic. Perhaps his appearance in several apps – including this new one – will boost his fame. It's a "reading adventure", which means a mixture of storytelling and puzzles based on letters, numbers, shapes and colours.
iPhone / iPad
"Here's How You Can Easily Create Mobile Apps Without Knowing Anything About Programming!" (affiliate link)
Drawma: Celeb Gossip Doodle (Free Apps)
More photo-editing with this app, which could be subtitled "Do to photos of famous people what Perez Hilton does". Scribble on them, in other words. It pulls in photos, videos and articles from more than 20 gossip websites, and lets you doodle on the pics before sharing them with friends.
iPhone
If 3D racing games are your bag, The Jump may be the latest to flex your fingers. One nice touch: it's designed around "bitesize" play as you try to escape a series of challenges in five minutes or less. There's also music from DJ Poet – a Grammy award-winner, no less.
iPhone / iPad
This new app from Callaway Digital Arts follows a similar Mr. Potato Head app earlier in the year. The idea is the same: create and tweak the chippy character with more than 200 parts, capture snapshots of her and – assuming you're happy to – pay to remove the ads or get extra playsets.
iPhone / iPad
6m copies of the Abalone board game have been sold, but now it's available in digital form for mobile devices. The game, which involves pushing marbles around, can be played against a friend (locally) or against AI opponents, with a 60-level challenge mode to refine your skills.
iPhone / iPad
Another children's app, this time with a pure educational focus. This is all about multiplication, as children match questions with answers, and create their own scenes with digital stickers as a reward.
iPad
This social mini-golf game shot past 1m downloads in its first day of release. It sees you playing 70 holes over five courses, negotiating dinosaurs, pyramids and sharks along the way, while challenging Facebook friends and bragging on Twitter.
iPhone / iPad
iPhone / iPad
One final app for kids, with a famous brand behind it. Fireman Sam is the hero in this collection of mini-games and activities, with Pontypandy villagers to be rescued, fryer fires to be put out, and hoses to be mended.
iPhone / iPad
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