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Play TuneXeso to test how acquainted you are with music
TuneXeso is a music matching game that lets you pick any artist on iTunes, hear samples of the songs, then try to match them with the duplicate sample using your memory as you flick through the unlabeled collection. With the 16 songs the app presents, you have to make eight pairs. It's all about remembering the specific sounds to test how well you know some of your favorite artists. TuneXeso is completely free for iPhone. The game comes totally without any bells or whistles. Just start a new game by tapping "New Game" in the center and type in any artist that comes to mind with music on iTunes. If you want a randomized artist or don't want to pick any specific one of your own, hit the "random" button and TuneXeso automatically selects one. Gameplay simple as is the app's overall design, but it might be simple to a fault. It offers no instructions on how to play or how many people can play. Even the app's description in the App Store is vague. I fiddled around with the game for way longer than I'm willing to admit before I figured out how to start playing. I guess I shouldn't have such high expectations from an app named "TuneXeso," whatever that's supposed to be. Anyway, here's the explanation: samples of music start playing instantly when the game begins. A card is shown to you with a Check button at the bottom, a "Show Hint" button above that and a link to buy the song in iTunes. When you hear the song and feel like you've memorized enough of it to know what it is, you hit the check mark to temporarily select it. Then, flick left and right until you find the song that's identical in sound. Hit the Check button on that card to successfully pair the two and gain your rightfully deserved points. With 16 songs and inconsistent excerpts of music playing between pairs, it's not as easy as it sounds. The easy route is to pick an artist you're very familiar with, but tapping the "Random" button in the beginning provides more of a challenge. I noticed an odd amount of the songs often appear right next to each other in the list, which makes the game unnecessarily easier. They seemingly need better randomization. If you choose to show a hint, the card reveals the album artwork for the song currently playing. That's the only hint throughout the game. Use it as many times as you want, but bear in mind you score less points when you use hints. To beat your high score, you're better off going solely off of sound memory. The game also has a Compass mode that, when enabled, goes through songs on its own when you tilt the device. It works so poorly that it's not ever worth using though. Seriously, it's that bad, just use your fingers to swipe through. TuneXeso is relatively new. Down the line it could use improvements to the design and feature set, e.g. the ability to play songs by an entire genre like holiday music or from a specific album rather than artists alone. For now, it's a solid start and a great game for parties and music connoisseurs alike. Get it in the App Store free for iPhone. Update: Version 1.1 of TuneXeso, released after the completion of this review, brings easy and hard playing modes plus new opportunities to improve your score and earn bonus points. I also noticed that card randomization and the stability of the Compass feature are slightly more polished as well. That update is available in the App Store now.
Daily iPhone App: Scurvy Scallywags is great fun for landlubbers or first mates
Ron Gilbert is the great game designer mind behind popular series like Monkey Island, Maniac Mansion, and the recent Deathspank games. His latest project is called Scurvy Scallywags, and arrived on iOS last week. The game is great -- it's a match-3 title that makes use of some excellent RPG and combat mechanics. While it's not the most polished thing on the App Store, there's a whole lot of piratey fun to be had. Gilbert (and his fellow developers) are obviously big pirate fans -- you may remember the great shanty scene from Monkey Island -- and this game has no lack of nice piratey touches, including hats, faces, and clothing to unlock, ships to build through a crafting system, and a whole lot of great music. The main goal of your match three adventures is to re-discover a lost pirate shanty. Whenever you come across a new verse, the gang of scabby buccaneers will happily sing it for you. There's also a fun twist in moving your pirate around the board. Whenever you match pieces, new ones will come in from the direction that you moved to match. Your pirate and enemy pirates are all in tile spots on the board, which means that with some nimble matching, you can keep your pirate away from the bad guys until you're ready to throw down in each stage. Scurvy Scallywags is great fun. I do wish the game was a little more full-featured -- most of the pieces you'll be matching are actually meaningless garbage pieces, and it would have been nice to give those some kind of function. But otherwise, the design is great, and the game has an excellent "just one more stage" feeling to keep you playing for a long time. Scurvy Scallywags is available on the App Store now for just 99 cents.
Daily iPhone App: Blendoku has you lining up colors to match
Blendoku is based on a crazy idea, made even crazier by the fact that it works. I am just plain terrible at colors. When I was working retail, I spent an entire day learning to lay out merchandise according to color. I was so bad at it, the trainer sent me right back to customer service. That's the very skill set that Blendoku tests, yet I still enjoy playing it. You're presented with several different colors which must be sorted by shade, lightness or various other qualities. Some levels are simple, with just a strip of various colors going back and forth, but some are very complicated, with multiple colors mixing up in different ways. The game works well. Moving the colors around is intuitive, and the fun, simple aesthetic allows you to focus on the puzzle. Blendoku was a surprise. If someone asked me if I'd like a game about lining up color combinations, I don't think I would have said yes. But this is a fun one, and it might give you a new look on how various visual colors go together (needless to say, you probably can't be color blind and play this). The game is free, with a few in-app purchases to help you solve puzzles or get rid of the ads.
Daily iPhone App: Light Byte provides frenetic color-matching fun
Light Byte is one of the most invention takes on "falling block" games I've seen in a while. In fact, there are a few genres mixed in here, including Snood's kind of color matching gameplay, as well as some excellent combo action. The game starts out with blocks slowly falling toward you on the screen, and it's your job to fire stars (by touching the various block columns) back up at the blocks, hitting the same colors in a row. Blocks that match the color you just hit fall off the screen, and (in the endless mode, anyway) you've got to keep the screen clear for as long as possible. It's really fun, and the title's groovy out-of-this-world soundtrack really contributes to the feeling that you're building up mega-combos when you can line up the same color all in a row. There are powerups that show up in the various colors as you move along, more colors that appear as you level up, and eventually the blocks also start to grow transparent over time, so you also have to try and remember which colors were where. It sounds frenetic, and it is, but the game presents these things to you in such a smooth manner that it's still good fun. Light Byte is a 99 cent download. It's definitely worth the price, and with quite a few options to play even outside the main endless mode, you'll probably be matching colored blocks for a long time to come.
Apple launches charitable matching program for employees
MacRumors has confirmed that Apple has instituted a program to match its employees' charitable donations, up to US$10,000 per year. It's restricted to full-time employees in the U.S. for now, but the company hopes to expand that. Tim Cook announced the initiative to Apple's employees earlier today: "Team: I am very happy to announce that we are kicking off a matching gift program for charitable donations. We are all really inspired by the generosity of our co-workers who give back to the community and this program is going to help that individual giving go even farther. Starting September 15, when you give money to a non-profit 501(c)(3) organization, Apple will match your gift dollar-for-dollar, up to $10,000 annually. This program will be for full-time employees in the US at first, and we'll expand it to other parts of the world over time. Thank you all for working so hard to make a difference, both here at Apple and in the lives of others. I am incredibly proud to be part of this team. If you'd like more information on the program, you can get it on HRWeb, which can be easily accessed through AppleWeb. Tim" Good on Apple and CEO Tim Cook. It sounds like a great program.
All Points Bulletin slays lag and improves matches
The relaunch of All Points Bulletin has brought with it quite a bit more buzz than the game had during its first go-around, but there are still issues to be addressed and kinks to be worked out. Fortunately for the devoted players of the game, the team behind the shooter has been working diligently to try and hammer things out as fast as possible. That starts with the ugly issue of server-side lag, which the most recent developer post claims to have slain for good. That's in addition to NVidia SLI support, a good thing for players who want to run the game at truly breathtaking settings. Beyond the technical side, however, there have been some adjustments and re-examination of the game's threat level system. The rating system is meant to ensure that players fight against other players of roughly equal skill, but due to some issues with the data the average players wound up being pushed into a handful of tiers, resulting in a few tiers with huge variances in levels. The blog entry outlines the changes being put into place to fix the issue, as well as future updates for the game in its current incarnation.
TUAW's Daily Mac App: Bejeweled 3
Fancy an addictive, fun, casual game for your Mac? Look no further than the classic Bejeweled, now back in its third iteration on the Mac. Played either in full screen or windowed, the standard game hasn't changed, you still match three or more gems in a row to clear them from the board. There are four different play modes to choose from: classic, which you just match the gems until you can't make any more moves, levelling up as you go; Zen, where the board is shaken up if you can't move; Lightning, where you have to match against the clock; and Quest, where you have to complete a set task or puzzle to progress. Four secret modes are also available to unlock like Poker, a cross between gem matching and the classic card game, which are unlocked by playing the four regular game types. Bejeweled 3 has all sorts of fancy gems, which explode, zap and annihilate the gems, while the explosions and sound effects are joined by an announcer who blasts out "Excellent" and "Awesome" when you get on a roll. The game even has a fairly decent midi sound track to it. If you're a fan, the whole experience really draws you in so be prepared to waste a good hour or two before you know it. As with most modern games Bejeweled 3 also comes with achievements in the form of 20 badges to collect, including five "Elite" badges, while you can level up with experience points gained from playing each of the games. Bejeweled 3 is available from the Mac App Store for the rather dear US$19.99, but if you've played the free online version and want the ads gone and a native experience, Bejeweled 3 for Mac delivers in droves and there's even a free trial to test it out.
TUAW's Daily App: Tripolar
Tripolar makes a big point of saying that it's not a match-3 game, and though the grid looks similar to that matching genre, it's really not. But it is a puzzle game. The idea is that you have pieces coming in on top of the board, and touching anywhere on the grid will insert that piece and delete any like-colored pieces around it. Any pieces of a different color will switch to the next color in order. It sounds a little confusing, but in practice, it works pretty well. There's a timed mode, which challenges you to score as many points as possible in a certain amount of time, and a puzzle mode, which requires you to clear 50 different boards by putting the right pieces in the right places. Unfortunately, the gameplay is a little simple. Because you're dropping one piece in at a time, there are no real opportunities for building up combos, which is where the real fun is in these types of puzzle games. And unfortunately, there's no Game Center integration or leaderboards, though there is a high-score board for your phone itself. It is well-made and entertaining for what it is, and it's worth the US$0.99 price if this kind of game appeals to you.
Pantone offers color libraries for iPhone, mostly
While it's been in the App Store for the last few days, Pantone is officially launching its color discovery and management app for iPhone today, called myPANTONE. The Pantone Matching System, among other Pantone products, is the indispensable color system for printers and graphic designers, and it offers a wider gamut of color than traditional process color printing. myPANTONE lets iPhone and iPod touch users discover new and interesting Pantone color combinations, share them, and create palette files suitable for importing in desktop applications. You can start one of two ways: You can scrub through one of Pantone's color sets, including PMS coated, uncoated and matte colors, Goe, Pastels, and Fashion + Home. You can then drag individual chips into an area below the fanbook display, and build a palette of five colors. You can view each color full-screen, and add tags to colors, too. Alternatively, you can take a picture with your iPhone (or select an image from Pictures on your iPod touch) and build a palette from the colors in that image. myPANTONE exports HTML colors and .ase files (suitable for importing in Adobe CS products). You can also share palettes directly with other myPANTONE users nearby, and also upload them to the mypantone.com website (annoying sound warning), which is very similar to Adobe's Kuler (though it uses Pantone swatches, naturally). This is all well and good, of course, but for the technical color professional? Meh.
Snood Redood coming to the iPhone
Fortunately, World of Warcraft didn't exist while I was in school, otherwise I might not have finished my venerable BS degree at the storied Ithaca College at all. But if there was one game that almost kept me from finishing all of those essays and homework... well, it was Civ. But if there were two games, the second was Snood. And now that game is due in iPhone form soon as well. It features the same creature-matching gameplay (with both new and old graphics, as you can see above), which means it probably has the same addictive quality that kept me playing long after I was supposed to have read those excerpts the professor gave to us in English class, and three gameplay modes, including Story, Classic, and even a Time Attack mode. "Coming soon" is the word on when it'll be out, though the main webpage actually says "play now," so it probably isn't that far off. It's not the only "Bust a Move" style game out on the App Store, but it is Snood, and that itself is enough to take me back to the days of pizza and beer in the dorm room.
LFG Armory uses Armory to match up characters and guilds
LFG Armory is a new site that's aiming to beat the official Armory at its own game. Blizzard's site, as complete as it is, is still occasionally buggy and slow, and LFG Armory is looking to give players an alternative. And it works fairly well -- while the FAQ claims that data may be a little behind (due to caching of Blizzard's information), both the guild and player profile pages look pretty good and load quickly (and if the site can stay up after we link to them here, that'll be a real sign that it's a stable server).But the real feature that makes LFG Armory something more than Blizzard's official site is that it has a guild and arena team matching system built in. Once you register your name and your characters, you can do a search for guilds and arena teams and try to find one that matches what you want -- percentage of level 70s, class makeup, and number of members. On the guild side, you can set your guild as looking, and then when you hit a match, LFG will match you up.It's an interesting system, but like all social networks, it all depends on participation -- when I looked for a guild for my Hunter on Cenarius (who could use a guild, by the way), nothing came up, because likely no one on the server was looking (for a Hunter at least). But as an alternative to the Armory, LFG is looking pretty good. If they can get people to the site and stay up, they might give Blizzard's official site a run for its money.[Via World of Raids]
