Stuart Dredge 

20 best iPhone and iPad apps and games this week

The Who Tommy, FIFA, Galaxy on Fire - Alliances, Papa Pear Saga, Paul Smith, Doctor Who and more
  
  

The Who's Tommy gets an official iPad app.
The Who's Tommy gets an official iPad app. Photograph: PR

It's time for our weekly roundup of brand new and notable apps for iPhone, iPod touch and iPad devices. It covers apps and games, with the prices referring to the initial download: so (free) may mean (freemium) in some cases.

There's a separate roundup for Android apps, which was published earlier in the day. There's also a new format this week, separating out games and non-game apps. For now, read on for this week's iOS selection (and when you've finished, check out previous Best iPhone and iPad apps posts).

APPS

The Who Tommy (Free)

Accompanying the latest reissue of The Who's famous rock opera, this is being pitched as a "digital box set". The idea: if you've bought the remastered Tommy, you can play its tracks while browsing artwork and photos, reading a brand new book about the band, playing a themed pinball game and watching live videos from 1969.
iPad

FIFA Official App (Free)

Footballing body FIFA is getting ready for the World Cup 2014 draw on 6 December with a new app, which will bring details of who's playing who to fans live on the day. Meanwhile, the app promises scores, results and news from 197 leagues around the world, as well as fixtures, destination guides and team profiles in the run-up to the World Cup in Brazil. The link above is for iPhone, but here's the iPad version.
iPhone / iPad

Paul Smith (Free)

Or to give this app its full name: Hello, My Name is Paul Smith. It's an official app for British designer Paul Smith for fans to flick through his virtual notes, create Smith-like patterns, and browse his paintings and photos. It ties in with a new exhibition at the Design Museum, and is a treat for design students and fashion hounds alike.
iPad

The Elements in Action (£2.49)

Publisher Touch Press made a big splash with the original app for The Elements, a digital book that debuted alongside Apple's first iPad. This is even more fun though: a collection of 79 videos showing (often bonkers, in the best possible way) experiments showing the properties of various elements. "What happens when highly reactive rubidium is dropped into water? Or when a cannonball is placed in a pool of mercury?" and so on. It's a wonderful app, no matter what your chemistry knowledge.
iPhone / iPad

Disney Classics Collection (Free)

This is an app for parents and children to enjoy together: a collection of digital picturebooks based on classic Disney films Dumbo, Snow White, Bambi and the Aristocats, with animation, colouring, puzzles and music creation. Dumbo comes for free, with each other story costing £1.49 via in-app purchase.
iPhone / iPad

Mega (Free)

Mega is the cloud storage service of former MegaUpload boss Kim Dotcom, a controversial figure in the technology world. Mega is more of a rival to Dropbox, offering 50GB of storage for free, and more for paying subscribers. The iOS app gives you access to your stored files, and includes the ability to subscribe in-app.
iPhone

Barefoot Me Books (Free)

More picturebooks for children here, this time all from well-respected publisher Barefoot Books. It has digitised several of its fairytale books, which are available as £1.99 in-app purchases from the app's parental zone. The key selling point is the ability for children to record their own voice narration and sound effects on every page.
iPhone / iPad

DK Trip Planner (Free)

This comes from the travel division of book publisher DK: a neat way to plan overseas jaunts with places to visit, eat and shop, as well as offline maps, photographs to browse ahead of time, and the ability to sync customised itineraries from the DK Trip Planner website to the iPhone for on-the-go reference.
iPhone

Nick (Free)

Nick is the official app for children's TV network Nickelodeon in the UK, following 5m downloads of the US version since its release earlier this year. While it has two full episodes to stream, the app is more about games, shorter video clips and photos of popular shows and characters, including iCarly, SpongeBob SquarePants and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. New stuff will be added regularly to keep children coming back.
iPhone / iPad

Continuum (£2.99)

This is absorbing stuff for anyone with an interest in London: an app based on the snaps of photographer Chris Dorley Brown, who took his shots over two decades in the same locations in the borough of Hackney, with the same composition, to see how things had changed. More than 60 photos are included.
iPad

Endless Reader (Free)

Developer Originator made a marvellous Endless Alphabet app earlier in the year, featuring colourful monsters teaching children how to spell an array of weird and wonderful words. This follow-up adds sentence construction into the mix, still with the monsters, who act out the words to help children understand their meaning.
iPhone / iPad

Art and Skin (£2.99)

Two groups of people will be most interested in Art and Skin. First, anyone with an interest in tattoos, and second, anyone with an interest in slick app design. It's "the world's first digital 3D tattoo magazine", with its male and female subjects shot in 3D so they can be rotated around and zoomed in on for the best angles on their body art.
iPad

GAMES

Galaxy on Fire - Alliances (Free)

If you like your epic space adventures, you should definitely check out the previous Galaxy on Fire games, which are in the same space sector as Wing Commander and Elite. This brand new game is set in the same universe, but is more about colonising planets and collaborating (or, indeed, waging war) with other players. It looks beautiful, and although it's early days, there looks to be lots of depth.
iPhone / iPad

Papa Pear Saga (Free)

The last word is the clue here: this is the latest mobile game from King, whose Candy Crush Saga has become a bona-fide phenomenon over the last year. Where that game was a Bejeweled-style match-three puzzler, this is essentially a rewrite of another game, Peggle. Already available on Facebook, it sees you firing balls into levels to destroy pegs – comparing your scores to friends. In-app purchases play a prominent role.
iPhone / iPad

Doctor Who: Legacy (Free)

Talking of games that make their inspiration clear... The latest Doctor Who game will be instantly familiar to anyone who's played Puzzle & Dragons – one of the few mobile games to be making as much money as Candy Crush Saga. It sees you swapping colourful orbs around to attack monsters while building a team of the Doctor and his companions.
iPhone / iPad

Adventure Town (Free)

Supersolid is the latest hot free-to-play game maker on mobile, following the success of its Super Penguins game earlier in the year. Super Adventure sounds like same-old same-old: build a town, harvest crops, compare with friends etc. But its twist – you have to attract heroes to defend it from monsters, while exploring the land – plus some very polished gameplay makes it a cut above the herd.
iPhone / iPad

Final Fantasy IV: The After Years (£10.99)

In an apps world increasingly dominated by free-to-play games, Square Enix is standing its ground and charging a premium for remastered Final Fantasy RPGs. This is a sequel to Final Fantasy IV with a familiar mix of exploration, battles and yet more battles.
iPhone / iPad

Darklings (£0.69)

Amid the excitement recently about officially-sanctioned joypads for Apple devices, it's useful to remember that a fair few developers are experimenting instead with adapting traditional game genres to touchscreen controls. Darklings is a bewitching example: an atmospheric action game where combat is about drawing shapes on enemies.
iPhone / iPad

Wrath of Psychobos - Ben 10 Omniverse (£1.99)

This one's for The Kids: a new game based on Cartoon Network's Ben 10 series. This one involves controlling Ben or his friend Rook as they battle their way through 31 alien-strewn levels. A satisfying mix of puzzles and combat, whatever your age.
iPhone / iPad

Drive on Moscow (£6.99)

Finally, something for grizzled veterans of wargames: a title where you can play as the Russians or Germans in one of the key battles of the second world war. Tanks, cavalry and a map that changes with the bitterly-cold winter weather promise plenty of scope for tactics, while multiplayer ensures you can test your war-wits against other humans.
iPad

 

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