Best Windows apps this week
One-hundred and fifty-three 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.
This week saw a surprisingly large number of applications and only a handful of games worth mentioning. If you followed the Best Windows Apps of the Week series you know that this is not often the case as games tend to dominate the Windows Store.
Disney Infinity 3.0 is without doubt one of the largest applications yet in Windows Store -- it's nearly 30 GB in size. It is my app of the week but if you are not interested in games, you may find applications like BBC Store, Sygic GPS Navigation, or mTalk more to your taste.
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.
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.
- Quarto, a puzzle game for $1.49
- DjVu for Windows, a DjVu and PDF reader for $2.99
- Game of Clowns, an action game for $0.99
- Train Sim, a train simulation game for $0.99
- Tiny Empire Premium, a strategy game for $0.99
- Troubles' Land, a jump and run game for $0.99
Best app of the week
Probably the largest game yet on Windows Store with a size of nearly 30 GB.
Disney Infinity is a sandbox video game that combines physical toys with story-driven game play in the Disney universe.
The game features so-called play sets which are pre-created campaigns based on popular Disney brands such as Star Wars, The Incredibles or Pirates of the Caribbean, and a Toy Box mode which enables you to create your own game by using characters, weapons, gadgets and other items that are available to you.
Disney Infinity 3.0 adds the Star Wars universe to the game allowing you to play several play sets based on Star Wars and create your own Star Wars adventures in Toy Box mode.
Other apps
The application is powered by TomTom maps which you can download for countries and regions you are interested in after start as you are automatically signed up for a 7-day premium trial.
Features like offline access to maps, smart route planning and free map updates remain available to you after the premium trial expires.
The premium version adds advanced navigation features such as lane guidance, speed limit warnings or turn-by-turn voice guided navigation to the application's feature set.
This download manager integrates with Firefox and Google Chrome according to the Windows Store description, but that did not work for me.
It supports http, https and ftp protocols, authentication, and background downloading among other features.
Apart from that, it supports scheduling and download queues, pause and resume operations, and options to categorize downloaded files.
The free version of the app is limited to 64 download list items.
Descendants is an adventure game based on Disney Channel's series of the same name.
It is a social game at its core in which you dress up your character, complete missions, meet new friends and explore the campus.
An interesting game for fans of the series and people who like social games.
mTalk provides you with access to more than 100,000 web forums that you can access directly from within the app.
You may use the built-in search to find forums of interest, and sign-in to existing accounts to read private messages or make new posts from a simple-to-use interface.
BBC Store brings a large digital collection of BBC shows to buy that include popular shows as well as classic titles from the archives.
You need a BBC Store account to sign in to the application and use it. Shows can be streamed or downloaded after purchase, and features like parental controls and Cortana support on Windows 10 make it a great experience.
The app is only available for users from the UK.
Open any image that you have on your computer and repaint it with the colors provided by Tweakolor.
The image is loaded in black and white by default, and it is up to you to add colors to it to accentuate individual items or recolor it fully.
Great application for kids and adults alike.
Prune ($3.99, no free trial)
Prune is a beautiful tree growing game in which you grow and shape your tree with the swipe of a finger while avoiding the dangers of the world.
At its core, it is a puzzle game with breathtaking visuals, audio that enhances the experience tenfold, and an overall tranquil experience
Perfect Pad is an unofficial Wattpad client that brings the popular writer and reader community to Windows.
Use the What's Hot, Featured or Undiscovered tabs to discover new books or stories of interest, browse categories, or follow authors you like.
You may move stories to your reading list or archive stories that you have finished reading.
This is a time management game in which you try to serve customers requesting various items from your store.
What is easy at first becomes difficult quickly as you need to combine items sometimes to create new ones.
Flour and Water for instance are turned into bread, and it takes a while before you can serve the freshly baked bread to the customer.
The official Yandex app brings Russia's number one search engine to the Windows platform.
Use it to search the Internet, or get direct answers for questions that you may have.
Notable updates
The official Twitter application has a new look. In addition to that, it enables you to watch videos within your timeline now, and a new option to pin lists to the Start menu.
TripAdvisor published an update that brings Windows 10 compatibility and ships with UI modifications.