Best Windows apps this week
One-hundred and sixty-eight in a series. Welcome to this week's overview of the best apps and games released for Windows 8.x and Windows 10 in the past seven days.
This week saw some great releases and application updates. Facebook's official application is available to all users for instance, and updates to Twitter, Hulu or Todoist improved these apps significantly.
The new King game Papa Pear Saga is my app of the week pick. It is a fun game that is not another match-3 type of game but a game that stands on its own.
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
The following discounts are provided by Red Stripe Deals, a weekly changing list of offers, and the Deals Hub application.
The following is this week's selection:
- Grim Legends: The Forsaken Bride (Full), an adventure game for $3.49
- Doodle God, a puzzle game for $0.99
- IQ Mission 2, a puzzle game for free
- Baseball riot, an action game for $1.49
- Chimpact, a jump and run game for $2.49
- LCARS Interface, an Enterprise.like computer interface for $1.49
App of the week
The latest King game for Windows 10 is not another Candy Crush Sage clone but a game that stands on its own.
It plays a bit like the Japanese game of Pachinko mixed with Flipper elements.
You shoot pears out of a cannon positioned at the top, and try to bump into as many elements displayed in each level as possible to reach a certain score threshold or other level objectives like bringing down fruit or lighting up the buckets.
Use the mouse, or touch, to control the speed of the projectile as well as its axis. While you may shoot multiple pears in rapid succession, you don't control what happens afterwards to them as that occurs automatically.
Other apps
Readia for Windows 10 (free for the next 10-days, then $1.99)
Readia is a comic book reader for Windows 10 that you can use to read and manage your digital comic book collection.
It supports zip, rar, cbz and cbr archive formats, jpeg, png and bmp image formats, and pdf currently.
Network Data ($1.39, free trial available)
Network Data displays information about the computer's network traffic.
Traffic information includes upload and download data for all network adapters, graphs, and options to display all data, or data from the last month, week, day or hour.
The app supports a live tile to display the information in the Start menu, notifications, and color customization options.
The data is taken directly from Windows 10's network statistics dialog.
Voice Wake ($1.99, free trial available)
Voice Wake requires a static IP address and that Wake On LAN is configured on the device.
It enables you to change power states of the PC (wake, shutdown, restart and hibernate) using Cortana.
This is a basic game in which you control the speed of a car that is driving around in a circle all the time.
Your task is to avoid collisions with other computer controlled vehicles by decelerating or accelerating the car.
Oxenfree ($19.99, no free trial)
Oxenfree is an adventure game about a group of friends opening a ghostly rift.
The game, inspired by events of World War II, uses a conversation system that changes the story and relationships based on the decisions you make.
It features beautiful visuals and an interesting story that may remind you of teen and horror movies of the 80s.
Notable updates
Facebook, the official Facebook application for Windows 10 is now available to all users. It has still a beta tag though.
Hulu has been reviewed by Alan this week. The new versions introduces Cortana and Live Tile support, a new vertical layout, and support for personalized watchlists and home pages.
Twitter updated with Moments support.
Todoist Preview has been updated with live tile support for "today" and "next 7 days", initial support for Windows 10 mobile, new context menu options and more.
EzPodder, a video and audio podcast management app is available as a lite version as well now. Plus, it is a universal application.
TVPlan Beta updated with Tract.tv support, experimental trailer viewer, actor dialog options, and a lot more.