Friday 28 September 2012

Scramble Master


The best anagram game out there! Unscramble the letters as fast as you can! Earn stars! Win medals! Have fun!

Unlike some other anagram games, Scramble Master only uses words you might have heard of. No periblem, no ekpueles, and no murrhine. It's not about adding esoteric words to your vocabulary, it's about having fun!

With thousands of words to choose from, word lengths from three to eight letters, and four difficulty levels, you'll probably never see everything it has to offer.

Available for Android devices and on the BlackBerry PlayBook







Friday 21 September 2012

Can anyone tell me what happened?

As of yesterday, I'm suddenly getting four times as many visitors here as I have in the past. They're all coming from the usual places, though. So, was GPS Data Master featured somewhere or something? I know I released an update for it a couple days ago, but I've done that before, and it didn't provoke this kind of response.

Wednesday 19 September 2012

Review: Shaw Exo WiFi


Shaw Exo Wifi is a simple tool from Shaw Communications that will show you the locations of any Shaw Exo Wifi hotspots in your area, or anywhere else you might like to look for them. It has an online mode that will show you exact locations and give you directions courtesy of Google Maps, as well as an offline mode that will give you a city-by-city list of locations. You can search by city or by an exact address, and you can refine your search based on what type of building the hotspot is in, such as hotels, coffee shops, and Shaw stores.

UI
The UI is clean, and suitably coloured, but scrolling the list of locations can be a bit janky.

Usefulness:
If you're heading someplace new, or out on the town and carrying your tablet for some reason, and what to know where you can get online with Shaw, then this is the app for you. It's not quite as useful for people such as myself who aren't Shaw customers.

Reusability:
It's always good to know where a wifi hotspot is, so you could find yourself using this over and over again.

What I Liked
-The app notices when you lose your wifi connection and automatically switches to offline mode.

What I Hated
-Some Shaw Exo WiFi zones are accessible to the general public under certain conditions according to the help file, but it doesn't give any way of differentiating them.
-It takes a while to start. The first time I launched it, I thought it had locked up.
-Doesn't recognize that it has access to GPS if it can't get a signal right away.

Final Verdict:
Not particularly useful if you're not a Shaw customer, but if you are, and you're on the go a lot, you might find it helpful.







Shaw Exo WiFi is available for free from Shaw Communications on BlackBerry App World
Reviewed version 1.0

Review: NBA Fantasy News


NBA Fantasy News is a news aggregator app. The news comes in four types RoloWorld Fantasy News, ESPN.com NBA News, NBA Highlights on Youtube and news from NBA.com. Each category gives you three pages of stories, and each page consists of five to seven stories, made up of a headline, a couple lines from the article, and, in the case of the Youtube section, the preview image from the video. Tapping a story brings up a screen that allows you to visit the originating website and read the full article, and lets you tweet the story or share it on Facebook if you so desire. That's the extent of what it does as far as I can tell.

UI
The user interface is clean, responsive, and highly intuitive.

Usefulness:
This is not a particularly useful app. It basically just gives you headlines, and you can more or less get those just by visiting the respective websites it culls information from.

Reusability:
It looks like the information will update throughout the day, so if you like getting your NBA news this way, you'll probably use it a lot.

What I Liked
-The UI design is well done.

What I Hated
-Some of the articles it lists require access to ESPN Insider. I assume that's probably free, but I don't have an account there.

Final Verdict:
A decent news aggregator, but a news aggregator nonetheless, so it's probably not worth the time to download it.




NBA Fantasy News is available for free from Bobby J. Saini on BlackBerry App World.
Reviewed version 1.0

Review: Chicky and the Cats: Dorobou Neko


Chicky and the Cats: Dorobou Neko is a puzzle game in the vein of ChuChu Rocket. The object of the game is to guide Chicky the chick around the game board to pick up packages while avoiding obstacles and dodging angry kittens. Chicky will walk in a single direction until he's incapacitated in some way, so it's up to you to place arrows to guide him around the level's obstacles. You place the arrows in advance, then tap the "Start" button and watch Chicky go. And watch you shall, since he's not exactly a fast walker, and you're probably not going to get the arrows right the first time.

Graphics:
Cartoony and reminiscent of old 16-bit era games. They're not flashy, but I found them well-done and suitable to the game's content. The isometric view when Chicky is walking around is a bit glitchy, but looks really nice.

Sound:
The one song is a bit slow, which made the game seem even slower than it already was. There's no option to turn it off, but I have volume controls, so it's not too bad. Sound effects are limited, but appropriate to the game style.

Gameplay:
You begin in an overhead puzzle view with the tile-based game board in the middle, and your various pieces off to the side. Arrows (and Chicky's airplane which allows him to fly over obstacles) are placed by tapping and dragging them onto the board. The pieces are a bit small for my fat fingers, but I managed okay. After you're happy with your placement, you hit the Start button, and the game switches to an isometric view where you watch Chicky walk around the board. It's head-poundingly slow. If Chicky makes it to the goal with all the packages, you win. If not, you lose and have to start over. Seeing Chicky devoured by a cat just as he's about to make it to the end, and realizing that you'll have to start all over again is heartbreaking.


What I Liked:
-The puzzles are reasonably well-designed, and the difficulty seems to scale relatively well as you progress.

What I Hated
-Tapping Chicky will make him change direction, but this change doesn't persist between run-throughs, meaning you have to redo it every time.
-It's slow. Incredibly slow. Watching Chicky walk around the level without having any input is really, really dull.
-Each time you launch, you're met with an unskippable intro scene.

Final Verdict:
A fine start, but needs a few tweaks to be really good.




Chicky and The Cats: Dorobou Neko is available for free from TriHam on BlackBerry App World.
Reviewed version 0.3.1.

Review: Princess dress up

After discovering that nearly every app review site wants you to pay them for the honour of having your app reviewed, I decided that I would choose two apps and two games to review here. Choosing the two most recent arrivals on BlackBerry App World has produced some strange results.

Princess dress up is the latest in a long line of dress up games. Well, latest in the sense that it's new to the Playbook. It's an Android app that runs in the emulator. And I use the word "runs" fairly liberally since I was only able to get it to start once without having to reboot the device; after that it seemed to work fine. But, when it does actually work, it's a pretty generic "dress up" app.

I should also note that the listing on App World is "Dress up Princess" but the app description and icon refer to it as "Princess dress up", so that's what I'm going with.

Graphics:
Fairly simplistic, but good enough for what it's trying to accomplish. You're given a choice of seven girls to dress up, and each one comes with a variety of different clothing pieces. Some bits are generic across all the girls, but most are tailored individually, and fit with the style of the game.

Sound:
One short, annoying song playing on a loop. There's a control to turn it off, which is good. Very good.

Gameplay:
Practically non-existent. You drag and drop bits of clothing onto the girls, and that's it.

What I liked:
-The girls were a little ethnically diverse and of various ages, so there's something for all the girls out there.
-If you want fine movement, there are controls on the side that will allow you to move things on a pixel-by-pixel basis.

What I hated:
-The music was terrible and grating.
-The clothes only really seem to fit in one particular spot most of the time, and there's no option to get them to snap to it.
-Using it made me feel like a creepy pervert.

Final Verdict:
It's not really my bag, but if you're a young girl, this might be your thing.






Princess dress Up is ad-supported and available for free from kidgames on BlackBerry App World.
Reviewed version 1.0.1.5

Tuesday 11 September 2012

Alternate Means of Distribution

With Completionist now available on Google Play, I decided to try to boost awareness by releasing it on a few other app stores as well.

Right now, it's available on GetJar, and I've submitted it to SlideMe, but it hasn't been approved yet.

Meanwhile, I have to say that it's a bit of a pain to get your app up on either of those stores. At least it was for me.

GetJar has a funny requirement for multiple icon sizes. Strangely, it limits the maximum file size as well, so I had to spend a few minutes trying to optimize a 120x120 icon down under 10kb. Ultimately, it just wasn't possible, so I wound up having to upload something that was considerably less than ideal, all for want of 5000 bytes. With today's bandwidth and storage costs being so low, I can't imagine why they need to limit things so harshly.

The SlideMe site became unresponsive when I tried to complete the app upload process, so I wound up having to repeat it three times before it finally took. Additionally, the upload site has a bug where the tiny thumbnail it produces after you upload a screenshot will occasionally be for a different app entirely. The file still uploads properly, but it's a bit disconcerting.

That being said, there's at least one thing I like about SlideMe: The ability to respond to user comments. I can't do that on BlackBerry App World and it's been an unending source of frustration. Too many users leave questions in the comments, and there's just no way to reply.

Unfortunately, after two and a half weeks my app has yet to be approved on SlideMe, and GetJar has led to a mere 12 downloads. As it stands, I can't recommend either one.