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Lots of big app updates and releases today: The Simpsons, Puzzle Craft, Horn, more
There's just something about this day, apparently. There are a whole bunch of new big releases in the App Store, and quite a few apps have added updates; most of them claiming it's just in time for the back-to school rush. Here's a sampling of the best stuff out there for you to browse through. EA's The Simpsons: Tapped Out has returned to the App Store after being pulled earlier this year. The game's been updated with new graphics and new gameplay, so hopefully Simpsons fans will like it better. Scribblenauts Remix is the recipient of a new Back to School update, with a new playground area featuring school-themed challenges. Following in the footsteps of EA, Chillingo has launched its own Daily Deals site, and Angry Birds HD is 66% off to celebrate. Chillingo's also got a new game out called Puzzle Craft that looks like it's about to steal way too much of my time. Codea got a big update, with a few new features, and it's now run using ARC (which just means it runs a little cleaner for us users). Ok, it's not much of a surprise, but Phosphor Games' Dark Meadow followup, the Zynga-published Horn is out this week, and it's a very good-looking action game. The great iBlast Moki 2 HD is free right now. In no uncertain terms, get this game. A new endless runner game called Flip's Escape was just released, and it looks good. And finally, I don't see it on the App Store yet, but don't forget: Dominion is finally due out in that official form later on this evening. Stay tuned. Odds are that there's at least something for you to download in there. We'll have closer looks at many of these apps on the way, but there's a heads up on the biggest news. Enjoy the new apps!
Codea-created app arrives on the App Store
I've been slowly wading into App Store development recently, and while I've found Apple to be extremely supportive developers on the Mac, it hasn't released any development tools for iOS ("Xcode for iPad" is one of those mythical creatures that developers will tell you they want only after a couple rounds of drinks). This realization drew me to Codify, now named Codea, an iPad app that allows developers to write and even run XML code on the iPad. Unfortunately, the biggest drawback with Codea was that you couldn't run that code anywhere else. The best you could do was copy the code out and then put it into some other development environment. But that gap is being narrowed. The developers of Codea have released an App Store game called Cargo-Bot, which is a title fully developed inside the Codea app on the iPad. The app is free, and it's just a proof of concept at this point (but it does have some nice features, including 36 levels, and even a way to upload solutions to YouTube). But the devs also say they're planning to release the framework they used in Xcode on the Mac. Once that happens, other devs will be able to code on the iPad, download that code to the Mac, put it into Xcode, and then make full-fledged iOS apps written right there on Apple's tablet. [via TouchArcade]
Cargo-Bot is a deceptively simple iPad puzzle game, made on the iPad (video)
After flinging avian creatures no longer provides a suitable outlet for your mental acumen, you may wish to graduate to a more challenging level of iPad gameplay. Might we suggest moving crates? Seriously, though, while the premise behind Cargo-Bot may seem effortless, it's actually nothing of the sort. In the game, players must program a crane to properly situate boxes, but with the help of loops and conditional variables, it rewards players for discovering the most efficient method. We definitely dig the idea behind Cargo-Bot, but what makes it truly unique is the fact that it was programmed entirely on the iPad with Codea -- which also makes it a first of its kind. Go ahead and check out the free app for yourself in the source below, but if you need a bit more convincing, just hop the break for a quick premise of the game.
