Beyond navigation and route planning, the promise of location-based smartphone apps is still an area in which developers can make their mark in the Windows Phone store. Social Scout steps up to take 'where you are' and 'what's around you' (with a bit of Facebook in the mix) to see if it can deliver.
The Windows Phone Design Language (oh how I wish it was still the far easier to type 'Metro') is a good interface for personal use, but there are areas where it can be a bit more awkward than normal to use. One of those areas is when you are driving in your car and need to use the handset. Sure, the live tiles and large fonts can just about cope with that, but Car Dash from RWI goes a step further. It crafts a UI which will open up when your phone goes into the car holder, and allow you to navigate vital functions with large friendly buttons and clear text.
Can you get the ball to the exit? It's a standard trope for puzzle games, but sometimes you find a little gem that draws you in. Let me introduce you to Super Smith Bros' little bundle of fun that uses the far seer physics engine and a pair of wicked minds to the puzzle genre. This is... Drawtopia.
In a sense, there's little point in reviewing something which everyone can grab for free anyway - but this is an official Microsoft Studios title, and this is Minesweeper, always one of my favourite casual 'logic' games, so it's worth a look through, if only to entice you to grab it now and try for yourself. Plus, it's Xbox Live-enabled, so you get to win some pretty easy gamer points - again, all for free.
Following on from Dots Master, developer Noam Behar brings another classic pencil and paper game to Windows Phone. Mega Tic Tac Toe continues the real-world look, and brings an engrossing challenge to gamers on the Windows Phone platform.
Here we go, it's another application to help you browse and read through your RSS feed. Pheeb works with the Feedly common platform, is brightly coloured and well laid out, but falls to make the grade for frequent use.
A clever mash-up between the constant running genre and the likes of first person shooters like Doom and Quake, Into the Dead is finely balanced gameplay. Very finely balanced. On a knife edge - for some it will be all the zombie killing they crave for just the initial purchase price, for others the groundswell of extra in-app-purchases will prove rather more expensive.
It shouldn't surprise me that the classics are usually tarted up in any mobile app store, but it means that when I do find a game intro that hooks me, I'm going to get a little surprise when I realise "I know this!". Such is the case with Boxed In, AE's latest release for Windows Phone. Ready for the spoiler? It's Sokobahn.
Let’s put aside the fantastic plot of finding a room full of an infinite supply of ‘Voyager’ probes and the rockets to launch them, and simply enjoy the game. Your goal is very altruistic, to gather as much information as possible as your Voyager spacecraft flies past the various planets of the solar system. You set the departure angle from Earth, you set the level of thrust, and celestial mechanics will take care of the rest.
In the early days of Windows Phone, third party camera applications were the saviour of the determined snapper, offering far more than the Microsoft-written default application. Yet most Lumias now have Nokia Camera, with its truly pro-level interface. Begging the question: "Do we still need third party camera apps?" In truth, nowhere near as much, but ProShot here does have some unique tricks up its sleeve that might well endear it.
