Best Windows apps this week
One-hundred and forty-seven 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.
A bunch of quality apps have been released this week including the massive MMORGP Order & Chaos 2, the cad app Wedge, and the excellent jump and run Soppy's Adventure.
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.
- The Bridge, a beautiful 2D puzzle game for $2.49
- Bloons TD5, a tower defense game with monkeys and balloons for $4.99
- Doodle Kingdom, a puzzle game for $0.99
- Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary 8th edition for $13.99
- Game Studio Tycoon 2, a game company simulation game for $1.49
- Mind Snares: Alice's Journey (Full), an adventure game for $2.49
Best app of the week
Order & Chaos 2 is a story driven action MMORPG in which starts with a massive battle scene acting as a tutorial.
You are then taken to the character creation screen where you create your first character out of five races and classes.
Once that is out of the way, the real adventure begins. As is the case in all of these games, you start on level 1 and work your way up the food chain to learn new skills and become the strongest hero the world has ever seen.
Take on and complete quests to level up and gain access to advanced skills, spells, weapons and equipment.
The game features enough content for solo play but shines when it comes to group play.
It features PVP options and PVE dungeons, trading, crafting, and a lot more that you find in full price games such as World of Warcraft.
It is free to play which means that you may encounter restrictions built-into the game at one point or another.
The free version provides you with two character slots only for instance or a limited bag.
Other apps
Brilli Wallpaper Changer - Start, Desktop & lockscreen
The free wallpaper changer taps into Bing's vast archive of wallpaper images. It displays the latest images on start and provides you with options set these images as the start, desktop and lockscreen background of the system.
The app can rotate wallpapers automatically, supports the creation of collections, and can display the same or different wallpapers on lock and start screen.
Sky Cue Club: 8 & 9 Ball Pool + Billiards + Snooker
Sky Cue Club is a 3D pool game that features several game types including 8 and 9 Ball Pool and Snooker.
The game ships with a single player mode to practice trick shoots and complete challenges, a mode in which you play against the computer, and a hot seat mode to play against a friend on the same device.
The game is free to play but you can buy upgrades in the built-in store to remove advertisements, unlock premium content or additional computer difficulty levels.
Running Shadow is a mission-based running game with roleplaying elements that takes running games to the next level.
The core mechanics remain the same though. Swipe left, right, up and down during missions to move your character and avoid obstacles and collect gold scattered throughout the map.
What makes this game unique is that you fight enemies along the way using the same moves, and that you equip your character with stuff between runs.
You will learn special moves while playing the game which help you overcome critical situations.
Wedge is a professional 2D and 3D cad application that provides you with tools to design and prototype parts.
The program has no limitations and supports constraints and relations so that it is not necessary to calculate dimensions manually.
Existing designs can be imported into Wedge provided they are available in one of the supported formats (step, stp, st, igs, iges, brep and stl). Designs can be exported as SVG files.
Soppy's adventure ($0.99, free trial available)
Soppy's adventure is a wonderful jump and run game that works best on touch devices.
You control Soppy through swipe motions on the screen. What makes this unique is the fact that you can swipe as often as you like to change direction or speed of movement.
This gives you complete freedom of movement and excellent control over the main character of the game.
Gameplay becomes challenging quickly though as you'll encounter obstacles and creatures along the way that try to stop you from reaching the level exit.
The latest installment in the Croc's World series of jump and run games delivers more of the same.
Play through 60 levels of jump and run action that plays similar to classics of the genre such as Super Mario World.
The game features challenging enemies, lots of coins and extras to collect, and four bosses that you need to defeat to proceed.
Notable updates
- Fhotoroom, a photo editing and sharing platform is now compatible with Windows 10. The new version features a new Border Blur option and fixed several bugs.
- Xbox (Beta) gives you a glimpse of the next version of the Xbox app for Windows.