AppCraver » Tracy Rodgers

’stachetastic: A Digital Update on a Classic Pastime

Tracy Rodgers — Sun, 24 May 2009 17:00:53 +0000

’stachetastic – I’m sure there are some people who are reading this who never grew past the stage when they thought it was hilarious to draw fake mustaches on people. (I certainly didn’t.) And yet, these days, everything is digital. What’s an immature technophile to do? Download ’stachetastic by Work’s Out, obviously!

’stachetastic is a delightfully juvenile app which allows you to add to your photos not only a wide assortment of mustaches, but assorted facial hair, a handful of hairdos, and even a few accessories like sunglasses, a red clown nose or an eyepatch. The items all have fun and silly names like the magnum’stache, the flava’stache (a Flava Flav-style grill), the gigolo’stache and even the wtf’stache, an ornate octopus-looking gray monstrosity.

’stachetastic is easy to use; simply take a photo (or choose one from your library) and pick out the desired ’staches from the pop-up menu. (...)
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Epic Pet Wars Are The Cutest Wars Ever

Tracy Rodgers — Fri, 22 May 2009 17:30:15 +0000

Epic Pet Wars – Generally, when I’m assigned an application to review, I head to the App Store, download it, and check it out. When it comes to Epic Pet Wars by Miraphonic, however, it just so happened that I’d already downloaded it and even considered suggesting that I review it. So when I got the assignment in my inbox, I may or may not have said “Ha! Yes!” out loud.

The point is, basically, that Epic Pet Wars is pretty fun and awfully cute. It works in what I think is a manner similar to a lot of online role-playing games: You create your character (your pet), choosing from an assortment of creatures, and then build your pet up through training exercises and battling other users’ pets. There are all sorts of items to buy, ranging from weapons and armor to candies and potions and even frosted cupcakes. You can also buy stock options to help increase your income regularly!(...)
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Sea Rascals Is Frantic But Fun

Tracy Rodgers — Tue, 12 May 2009 23:00:43 +0000

It’s kind of funny — I grew up in the Florida Keys, so to me (and probably to most people, actually), the ocean is all about tranquility. However, Sea Rascals, which is set in the ocean? Makes me frantic! Admittedly, it’s a good kind of frantic, but nonetheless… stress!

Sea Rascals by Pajamahouse Studios is a fast-paced match-three game with a few twists to help keep things interesting. While Sea Rascals may take a round or two to get the hang of things, once you get going, it’s incredibly hard to stop (it is for me, anyway!). Sea Rascals is the kind of game that leads you to say “OK, one more game” about ten times.

The premise of Sea Rascals is simple, and very familiar if you’ve played other match-three games like Bejeweled — put together matching groups of three or more items to make them disappear from the board. Unlike most match-three games, in which players swap adjacent jewels/tiles/etc, in Sea Rascals, you can swap any two sea creatures, wherever their location on the board.

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Trixel Makes “Deceptively Simple” Definitely Satisfying

Tracy Rodgers — Mon, 11 May 2009 17:00:57 +0000

Someone send help; I’m addicted to Trixel! Stopping to write this review is killing me!

Well, OK, it’s not that dire. But Trixel, the new puzzle game by ADEPT Games is rather enthralling. It’s really simple to pick up, and somehow manages to be both easier and harder than you’d think. The object is simply to flip the colored tiles on the screen in order to make the pattern match the design shown in the upper-left corner. Sounds like a snap, right? However, most of the time (unless you get a warp tile or something; we’ll come back to that), you can only move between adjacent tiles, and any tile that you land on will flip, so often you’ll find yourself having to double back in order to get all the colors right.

Oh, and did I mention that there’s a limit to how many moves you can make? Tricky!

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Flower Garden’s A Satisfying Alternative to the Real Thing

Tracy Rodgers — Sun, 10 May 2009 21:00:45 +0000

I always joke that I can’t have kids, because I can barely keep a plant alive. Well, with Flower Garden by Snappy Touch, my virtual green thumb is put to the test. Luckily, the results are worth the effort, and even if i kill a plant or two, at least I’m not left with a dried-out, messy pot of dirt. Let’s call it a win-win.

Flower Garden is a lovely little application which lets you plant a variety of seeds, nurture your plants into full bloom, and then create bouquets from your garden that can be emailed. The more flowers you grow, the more types of seeds are unlocked. You begin with seeds for a yellow-and-white Mountain Daisy, a purple Spring Morning and an orange Tiger Bell — and I’d barely gotten my first bouquet of those assembled when I discovered I’d unlocked a new seed for the vibrant pink Starburst.

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iLick: Less Fun Than a Pet Store

Tracy Rodgers — Sat, 09 May 2009 21:00:14 +0000

iLick – I love dogs. Love ‘em. I have a picture of some random papillon as the wallpaper on my iPhone so I can pretend I own a dog. Big dogs, little dogs, Scottie dogs, Rottweilers, Cocker Spaniels, Great Danes, Golden Retrievers, mutts, purebreds…I pretty much adore anything vaguely canine. So while I hate to give a bad review to an application that features dogs, I have to say that iLick, well, it kind of bites. (Dog pun!)

Presented by Team Awesome LLC (and to be honest, that name almost makes me want to give a good review anyway, but I’ll stay strong) and featuring Diggnation’s furry mascot, Montana, as well as voiceover work by Diggnation co-host Alex Albrecht, iLick offers users a chance to watch a dog lick the screen of their iPhone from the inside. (See image above.) And…that’s it. (...)
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iTalk Keeps the Conversation Alive

Tracy Rodgers — Fri, 08 May 2009 17:00:42 +0000

iTalk - So, you know how sometimes you’re hanging out with people, or you’re at some party, or, god forbid, on a first date, and the conversation just kind of…stops? If you fear awkward silences (and really, who doesn’t?), iTalk by Bitix may be just the application for you. iTalk offers more than 150 conversation starters so you’ll never find yourself sitting around going “um, wow, can you even believe how hot it is today?” Because nobody wants to do that.

iTalk is incredibly easy to operate. Choose the categories in which you want to be given conversation starters. The options are Experience, Personality, Preferences and Opinion, which cover a wide array of topics, from “What embarrasses you?” to “Which is more important: the individual or society?” to “In your opinion, what are the real seven wonders of the world?” (Coffee, chocolate, the iPhone, David Cook, the ocean, the Internet and AppCraver.com, of course.)

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Diamond Fever Shines On

Tracy Rodgers — Wed, 06 May 2009 19:00:04 +0000

Diamond Fever – You know, there are some games or applications I download that I’m instantly excited about, and they end up being awesome. Then, there are the ones that sound great at first, but are actually disappointing once I start using them. Finally, there are apps like Diamond Fever, which I download and open, say “What? This is dumb,” and then proceed to furiously play for 30 minutes.

Diamond Fever by Howling Moon Games is a fast-paced twist on the popular match-three genre (probably the most famous game of this style is Bejeweled). To win, players rely on a combination of luck and quick reflexes. Simply touch groups of three or more of the same color gem to make them disappear. Gems are shot into all four corners from the center of the board, so that they stack up increasingly closely to the center. (...)
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Camera Zoom Is A Step In The Right Direction

Tracy Rodgers — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 23:00:40 +0000

Camera Zoom – Along with probably every other iPhone owner in the world, I’ve always been frustrated with the native iPhone camera. Sure, it takes a decent photo at close range if the light is good and if you hold the phone perfectly still, but beyond that, not so much. For the Twitter-obsessed like myself, for instance, who might want to TwitPic a concert shot, you’re pretty much out of luck if you’re not in the front row.

KendiTech has cooked up somewhat of a solution with Camera Zoom. While it’s not perfect, this application does at least provide a few options to help with your photo-taking. (...)
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Leaf Trombone Will Blow You Away

Tracy Rodgers — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 17:30:57 +0000

Leaf Trombone: World Stage – There’s something vaguely intimidating about being assigned to review an application and, upon doing a little research, finding out that it’s an extremely hotly-anticipated app from a developer with a line of very successful, high-profile offerings. So as I sit here, preparing to review Leaf Trombone: World Stage by smule (tons of additional info and tutorials can be found on the smule website, by the way), I can’t help but find myself thinking you’d better get this right!

And speaking of getting it right, Leaf Trombone certainly seems to do so. Billed as the “First Massively-Multiplayer Music Game,” Leaf Trombone: World Stage follows in the footsteps of smule’s smash hit Ocarina, turning your iPhone into a bona fide wind instrument. While Ocarina turned the iPhone into a magic flute, Leaf Trombone goes a little more earthy; developer Ge Wang told USA Today that he wanted to make an instrument that was more “whimsical and wacky,” like blowing on a blade of grass. Thus, Leaf Trombone was born.(...)
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