Best Windows apps this week
One-hundred and forty-two in a series. Welcome to this week's overview of the best apps and games released for Windows 8.x/10 in the past seven days.
Microsoft pushed out a new Insider build to Fast Ring systems this week which caused several issues. Probably the biggest of them all was that 64-bit versions of Chrome did not work properly anymore.
The app of the week title goes to the old school roleplaying game The Darksong Chronicles. If you are interested in apps, you may want to check out the new Wunderlist Beta application instead.
As always, if I missed an app or game that has been released this week that you believe is particularly good, let me know in the comments below or notify me via email instead.
Discounts This Week
Red Stripe Deals are back. Microsoft added them to the new Windows 10 Store. You find them listed under Collections when you open the store.
- Reckless Racing Ultimate, a racing game for $2.49
- Wolfram Alpha, compute answers and generate reports for $1.49
- Kids Learn About Music, a music learning app for $0.99
- Lightbot, a programming puzzle game for $2.49
- LiveATC, listen in on conversations between pilots and air traffic controllers for $0.99
- Mind Games Pro, a puzzle application for $2.49
Best app of the week
The Darksong Chronicles is a classic role playing game with turn-based combat mechanics.
It reminds me a lot of RPGs of the 16-bit era thanks to its isometric view and overall look and feel.
Your party of four explores the world, fights monsters and villains in turn-based battles, finds treasures, equips powerful weapons and learns new spells.
One issue that you may run into is that you cannot double-click on people you want to interact with if they are not adjacent. This is a problem at the inn and the main shop where you buy magic and other supplies.
You need to tap on the F-key on the keyboard while facing people to interact with them.
The game is well designed and if you like classic roleplaying games you should take it for a spin.
Other apps
Crafty File Viewer is a free system application for Windows 10 that lets you peek inside files without opening them directly.
When you load a file in the application, detailed information about it is displayed in the interface. This includes general information, like the file's name, type and size, but also checksums and either a hex dump or a preview if it is a media file.
Crafty File Viewer supports archives and can extract those, but does not display a list of files included in archives or options to extract individual files only.
Fairy Tale Mysteries 2: The Beanstalk
The adventure game puts you in the shoes of a boy who embarks on an epic journey inspired by Grimm's Fairy Tales.
The game itself is a point and click adventure game in which you move from screen to screen and save puzzles in each.
Puzzles range from "find item" quests to small games that you need to solve before you proceed to the next stage of the game.
The free version is limited and acts as a demo of the full version. The game itself ships with three difficulty levels, and a tutorial system to help out new players.
Wunderlist Beta is a preview version of the to-do list application that has been designed specifically for Windows 10.
The overall interface has not changed but the developers have improved the quality of the background images and text in the application.
In addition, it is now possible to collapse the side bar to increase the width of the application's main area.
All existing tasks are synced automatically when you sign in to the beta application.
Alien Hive takes the match-3 puzzle game concept and moves it to the next level. Instead of swapping adjacent items automatically, you may only move items in a row or column if space permits it.
Items of three or more are joined automatically once they are adjacent to each other. They are not removed from the board though but evolve instead so that the item count in each level increases constantly.
The adventure game plays similar to Fairy Tale Mysteries 2 even though it is more of a classic adventure game than one in which you find and match objects on a screen.
Two detectives respond to a distress call from a psychiatric hospital and witness a murder shortly thereafter. Their investigation uncovers darker things happening in the hospital.