This Week at 148Apps: June 29-July 3, 2015

Into July With 148Apps

How do you know what apps are worth your time and money? Just look to the review team at 148Apps. We sort through the chaos and find the apps you're looking for. The ones we love become Editor’s Choice, standing out above the many good apps and games with something just a little bit more to offer. Take a look at what we've been up to this week, and find even more in our Reviews Archive.

Divide By Sheep

Mathematics shouldn’t be as fun as Divide By Sheep makes it. Your job is to rescue sheep from the Grim Reaper by flinging them from island to island, eventually depositing them on a transport to safety. The catch is that only a set number of sheep can go on any one transport. Put too few on and the boat goes nowhere, put too many on and you miss out on a star. The sheep only divide up if you fling them onto a platform with too few spaces for them, and that’s what you’re going to be doing a lot. Sacrificing a few sheep for the greater good is everything here, and it only gets nastier. --Jennifer Allen

RESCUE: Heroes In Action

Every once in a while I like to dive into a weird European game. If you do too, look no further than RESCUE: Heroes in Action from rondomedia. This German developer has created a real-time strategy game where players control firefighters as they put out fires, axe down doors, and save citizens. Although it has a fair amount of jank, it's still a fun and challenging experience. Players select scenarios within one of three environment types (Suburbs, Urban central, or Industrial district) and have to use their skills to make sure they manage their water tanks and move quickly enough to remove threats, put out fires, and save lives. To do this they need to tap and drag paths for firefighters and firetrucks to follow along with tapping the appropriate command when a unit is near an interactive object. --Campbell Bird

FireWhip

FireWhip is the latest game from Dan FitzGerald, the mind behind last year's Dawn of the Plow. They might seem like completely disparate or even opposite titles - especially considering one is about fire and one is about snow - but they both share weird control schemes that feel intentionally strange. Because of this, FireWhip didn't click for me at first. However it eventually revealed itself to be a deeply challenging and rewarding arcade experience. Players use their finger to rotate a whip (made of fire, of course) around the screen to fend of waves of abstract enemies. A sudden stop with a fully extended whip can cause it to crack and send flames across the screen, while spinning the whip too fast for too long can cause parts of it to burn out. Keeping these rules in mind, players face off against a variety of enemies including cowards that run away from the flames, fearless tanks that charge ahead, and fast-moving warp units that beam across the screen directly at players. The challenge of FireWhip is in knowing how to deal with each enemy quickly in order to rack up a high score. --Campbell Bird

Sonic Runners

Upon every Sonic the pro- and anti-Sonic crowds get increasingly more disagreeable. Although I don't have particularly strong feelings one way or the other for the blue hedgehog, I think it's safe to say his earliest work was among his strongest. Sonic Runners is an endless runner that captures the speed and platforming of 2D Sonic games, but there are a lot of things wrong with the non-running parts that make it hard to enjoy. The actual meat of Sonic Runners is a pretty fun and challenging runner. Players attain a specific score on a level by accumulating rings and emeralds before facing off against Dr. Eggman, much like the original games. They can unlock Tails and Knuckles as playable characters, both of which lend their strengths in specific situations. --Campbell Bird

Tales From Deep Space

Amazon Game Studios is gradually beginning to make a mark on the App Store. With the recent release of Lost Within and Til Morning’s Light, we now have one time Amazon Kindle Fire exclusive, Tales From Deep Space - a fairly charming puzzle adventure game. It doesn’t revolutionize the genre but that doesn’t stop it from being quite appealing. You control a traveling salesman and his drone as you attempt to escape a Space Station. The two have to work in conjunction when traveling around with the main controls involving you switching between the two at regular points. It’s a familiar concept whereby you leave one character on a switch while the other completes a given task, but it works well here. --Jennifer Allen

Other 148Apps Network Sites

If you are looking for the best reviews of Android apps, just head right over to AndroidRundown. Here are just some of the reviews served up this week:

AndroidRundown

Drift Spirits

DRIFT SPIRITS seems to be the type of game that could allow one to live life on the edge. Digitally. At its core, it’s a 1v1 drag racing game with an emphasis on drifting. Competitors go toe-to-toe on curved race track that are all but built to encourage oversteering, and the idea is to level up and get rewards to improve one’s car and progress as far as possible. --Tre Lawrence

SmartNews

In a perpetually fast-paced world, there is always a place for easy-to-use news apps. Enter SmartNews, an app from Japanese developers that already has quite the positive reputation on Google Play. Upon first inspection, the app looks clean. It opens up into the main page, and one gets to see the white background and splashes of color upon that in the tabs at the top. It is set in blog form, with text summaries bordered by a relevant pictures. It a serious look, but easy on the eyes, and easy to appreciate from a visual perspective. --Tre Lawrence

Prison Break: Lockdown

Prison Break: Lockdown is an interesting game that manages to be a mystery, a hidden object game and probably more… simultaneously. It takes a fairly popular theme — escape — and build upon it to create a leveled game. The game incorporates a lot of research elements; the player gets a scene, and has to investigate for objects to interact with. Interacting comes in different forms…some objects provide clues to solve other puzzles; several can be collected and even combined to solve riddles. To see if an area has a clickable item, one must click specific areas on the screen to see if one if those areas can be enlarged. --Tre Lawrence

All this, plus news, game guides and even more reviews than we can share here!