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Saturday, 28 June 2014

Best apps of June 2014





We've gathered up the bestest, freshest iPhone apps and iPad apps to hit the App Store in June for you guys. We've got five games, five apps, and a handful of honorable mentions, not to mention the great suggestions that are bound to come in in the comment section. As usual, we have a full range of puzzles, action games, utilities, photography apps, and just about everything else you could be using your iOS device for. There's also a healthy mix of both free and paid apps to check out here.


Are you ready to get downloading? Dig in!


Ready Steady Play



Ready Steady Play is a highly stylized minimalist cowboy game. Players dive into a variety of smart mini-games, mostly depending on challenging target practice with your six-shooter, though there's also a runner that is hilariously similar to Canabalt. Game Center is implemented for online leaderboard bragging rights. If you're looking for some really great local multiplayer fun, the precursor, Ready Steady Bang, is also a great game and free for a limited time. If you've always had the inkling that you're a rootin', tootin' cowboy beneath it all, grab Ready Steady Play.



Jellies!



Jellies is an adorable finger-friendly puzzle game. Players have to drag lines between same-colored jellies to eliminate them, and draw a whole loop to capture others, if at all possible as they dart around. You only have 60 seconds to wipe out as many of these deceptively bloodthirsty little buggers, but there are a wide range of power ups and unique jellies to capture which offer a few additional tactics. Missions provide extra rewards if you can pull them off, online leaderboards ensure you're always pushed to beat your buddies, and progressively more challenging levels will be unlocked as you play. Still, the youthful and cute art style mixed with morbid themes and left-field humor will be what keeps you hooked to the fast-paced gameplay in Jellies.



Broken Age



Broken Age is a beautiful hand-crafted point-and-tap adventure game made by the folks at Double Fine. You may recall they set records with their crowdfunding project awhile back. Players hop between a girl with a hugely important (but dire) destiny, and a bored boy in space. Working through dialog trees with the characters in either of their worlds creates a rich and surprising storyline. You'll recognize at least a few of the voices, like Elijah Wood, Wil Wheaton, Pendleton Ward, and Jack Black. This is only episode one, with more incoming. Broken Age is a polished experience that brings back a kind of game we haven't seen in a long time.



Godfire



Though Godfire: Rise of Prometheus is mostly a conventional action game with dodge, block, light attack, and strong attack buttons, it's an extremely good-looking title. Highly cinematic finishing moves, combos, and truly ugly bosses make a feast for the eyes. Players are in the greaves of Prometheus, who has been cast from the heavens, separated from an object of untold power, and is on a quest to get it back before its original protectors can get to it. Your rage meter grows as you lay low all manner of beasts, and, once full, lets you unleash awesome supernatural attacks. Though it's mostly blood and guts, the action is interspersed with simple (but polished) puzzle mini-games. It can't be an adrenaline trip all the time, you know. Players progress by upgrading armor in light, medium, or heavy varieties, changing up their weapons, and bumping up stats. If you're looking for some eye candy, snag Godfire.



Monsters Ate My Birthday Cake!



Monsters Ate My Birthday Cake is a throwback to classic action RPGs like Zelda framed as a series of puzzles. Players switch between several adorably crude monsters with their own abilities to move and avoid obstacles and rescue delicious pieces of birthday cake. There's a village full of characters to talk to with their own unique personalities and stories. The art style is altogether whimsical (though potentially very borrowed), and simple tracing controls are well-suited for mobile. Monsters Ate My Birthday Cake is colorful take on puzzle games with enough retro charm to keep older folks playing, and enough humor for the younger crowd too.



Photoshop Mix



Photoshop Mix is a fresh new editing app that excels in selecting parts of an image. It ties in with Creative Cloud, so you can seamlessly shunt your creations into Photoshop on your Mac, or enjoy server-side image processing for the particularly fancy stuff. Users can easily pick out areas of their images, selectively apply adjustments, and save those adjustments without destroying the original picture. Adobe also unloaded a whole bunch of other apps this week, many to coincide with the announcement of their new Bluetooth pen and ruler products. Adobe Line and Sketch are both worth checking out, even without the accessory, plus Lightroom for iPhone just made its first appearance this month as well. For anyone into photography (mobile or otherwise) this has been a good month.



Path Talk



Path Talk is a new instant message from the makers of the familiar alternative social network. Path always made a name for itself by offering a wide variety of check-in types, it carries those over to Path Talk. It's easy to share location, images, short audio messages, and more to your personal circle of friends. One of the particularly neat features of Path Talk is called Ambient Status. It will automatically update your status based on what you're up to: what music you're listening to, if you're out and on the move, and if your battery is running low. You can also go off the record to have messages deleted after 24 hours. Though Path Talk is free, you can shell out $24.99 for a year of ad-free service with all of the sticker packs, camera filters, and early access to new ones. Give Path Talk a shot if you're looking for something a little more full-bodied and social than iMessage, but steers clear of Facebook.



BeamIt



BeamIt is another messaging app, except its exclusive focus is on sharing pictures. Whole groups of photos can be shared with friends using the app or via e-mail. Albums can be shared to multiple groups separately, though you can always claw back photos you regret sharing later on. Messages can be queued up for sending later if you're stuck offline for a spell. Pictures are shared at full resolution with a full commenting and liking system, and there's a custom-formatted iPad version which takes advantage of the additional screen real estate. The guys who make BeamIt also did Cooliris, so as you can imagine, they're super-slick 3D photo gallery also shows up here, though you'll need Cooliris if you want to see all of your various photo sources in one spot. If you're looking for a way to share lots of pictures with lots of friends that doesn't hinge on the usual social networks, try out BeamIt.



Moment



Moment is a hugely helpful lifestyle app that tracks your usage and gently reminds you if you're using it too much. With the $1.99 premium upgrade, you can set daily usage limits for yourself, and will get audio warnings as you approach those limits. Users set times during the day in which to track activity. Beyond nagging you to get off your phone and enjoy the world around you, Moment can also use GPS to track where you go throughout the day and place your track on a map, though that will likely take a bite out of your battery life if you leave it on all the time. If you're having trouble keeping your phone in your pants, Moment may be able to help you out.



Shutter



Shutter is a promising new camera app that focuses on cloud backup. As many or as few of your photos can stay stored on your phone locally before getting backed up to the cloud. Big videos and large batches of photos can be shared easily over e-mail, social networks, or to friends using Shutter. Photos have their own commenting and liking structure too, if you don't feel like shunting them out elsewhere. The bundled camera app has a few basic filters, but once backup is enabled, you can see all of the pictures stored on your device from whatever camera app you prefer. As a nice little bonus, you can flip on daily or weekly reminders of pictures shot in years past. Though the app bills itself as the "infinite camera", you get 20 GB of storage for free, or $4/month for 100 GB, and $19/month for unlimited. If you find yourself unsatisfied by the photo backup solutions provided by iCloud or Dropbox, Shutter is most definitely worth a gander.



Honorable mentions



Your favorite iPhone and iPad game and app launches of June?


Those are all of the best iPhone and iPad releases over the last 30 days that we've been able to find, but what about you? Have you already downloaded some of these? Have you spotted any great releases that we've missed? Let us know in the comments!












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