Best Windows apps this week
One-hundred and thirty-sixth in a series. Welcome to this week's overview of the best apps and games released for Windows in the past seven days.
Microsoft pushed out three builds of the Windows 10 operating system to Fast Ring systems this week (the latest is 10162) and will pick a suitable RTM soon for the operating system.
This week's updates seem to have broken access to the classic Store which means that users on the most recent versions of Windows 10 may not have access to Red Stripe Deals currently as they are not listed yet in the new store interface.
It is been a slow week in terms of releases for the platform which is why no app received the best app of the week award.
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 applications and games are discounted by at least 50 percent this week.
- Hydro Thunder Hurricane, a boat racing game for $4.99
- Grim Legends 2: Song of the Dark Swan (full), an adventure game for $3.49
- I, Gladiator, an arena-style fighting game for $2.49
- Kids Learning Word Games Pro, a learning game for young children for $0.99
- Machineers, a puzzle game for $4.49
Other Apps
The color book has been designed specifically for toddlers, pre-school children.
It ships with a solid selection of free themes and pages, and several add-ons that can be bought from within the application.
Plain colors and patterns are made available by the application on its pages. These can be selected with the mouse or touch easily, and to make things easier for young children, borders are recognized automatically so that the color is not pushed over those.
The official Eurosport application features daily news articles, live match scores with commentary, videos, a calendar of events and web chats with players and pundits.
The application displays recent scores, latest news and upcoming matches and events on the start page.
A click or tap opens the full news in the app, live scores or videos depending on what you clicked or tapped on.
Videos are accessible separately with a click on the main menu button.
The app lacks customization options, for instance to display only sports or leagues you are interested in.
The popular racing game, more than 100 million downloads across mobile operating systems, is now available for Windows as well.
It may be a coincidence but Zynga just announced the upcoming release of CRS Racing 2.
The game appears to be available to some users only at this point in time. While listed on the Microsoft Apps website, it is not listed in the store yet for some users.
No review at this point since this it was not listed on my system yet.
Your task in the game is to bring back eggs to the dragon mother.
You need to move tiles with the mouse or by touch for that to create a path from start to finish.
It is a basic game that becomes challenging after a couple of introductory levels when tiles and the layout of the level get more complex.
This is an empire building game through and through. As is the case in all of these games, you start small and need to build and upgrade to improve your town.
You do that by adding civilian, commerce and military buildings to your town, raising troops, collecting resources, waging war and competing against other players on the global leaderboard.
Premium currency is used throughout the game to speed things up.
If you like these kind of games, you will find Battle Empire: Roman Wars certainly enjoyable.
Next Generation Soccer Network offers on-demand and live coverage of -- currently -- nine international leagues that customers who signed up for the service can follow using the Windows app.
It covers the Dutch, Argentinian, Portuguese, Russian, Chilean, Ecuadorian, Venezuelan and Bolivian primary divisions currently.
Those are certainly not the most popular leagues out there but if you are interested in one or multiple of them, it may be an option especially if you don't get those leagues broadcasted on TV.
This space-themed arcade game has been designed for touch and while it loads if you use mouse and keyboard, you cannot control the game using those input methods.
The game itself is a fast paced space shooter in which you move your spaceship around, shoot at other ships that attack you in different ways, and avoid being shot at.
The game features upgrades as well as different enemy types including bosses.