Best Windows apps this week
One-hundred and forty-eight 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.
Only a handful of new applications were released this week for Windows including the excellent Candy Crush Soda Saga game and the interesting Voice Browser search application.
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.
- Hitman Go, a tactical turn-based game in the hitman universe for $2.49
- Quoridor 3D, a strategy game for $1.99
- Mahjong Secrets HD, adaption of the popular board game for $0.99
- Draw a Stickman: Epic 2, an adventure game in which your drawings come to life, for $1.49
- Sengoku Jidai, a turn-based strategy game, for $1.99
- Hello Venice 2: New York Adventure, a puzzle game for $1.49
Best app of the week
Candy Crush Soda Saga is at its core still a match-3 type of game but it introduces several new game elements to the game type that may make it interesting for Candy Crush lovers.
The game features plenty of new game modes. Soda for instance has you match bottles of Soda with candy to increase the Soda level of the map while Frosting search for and free candy bears trapped under frosted plates.
Along with those new game modes come fundamental game changes. In Soda mode, new candy may enter from the bottom instead of the top and there are scrolling levels now and levels that span over multiple maps.
Apart from that, you get new match bonuses for candy including matching four candy in a square or matching seven candy, and a new candy that gives you instant effects when matched.
Candy Crush Soda Saga manages to introduce new game modes without changing the core that made Candy Crush Saga a smash hit when it first came out.
If you like match-3 type of games, you will surely love this one as well.
Other apps
Voice Browser, as the name suggests, is a voice-driven application that lets you search the web using voice commands.
It uses Bing's Speech API and requires permissions to use the computer's microphone to function at all.
The app is limited to search and basic commands such as going back or forward though which is a limiting factor as you cannot open results using voice for instance.
Voice identification works well but when the app is not sure what you said, it is displaying suggestions on the left side of the screen that you can pick one from.
The app needs additional voice control capabilities before it becomes more than a nice proof-of-concept though.
The app has been available for about 3 months. The companion application for Eyefi's Mobi memory cards which feature Wi-Fi connectivity.
It supports wireless transfers of photos from a connected Mobi card to the device plus extra features such as synchronization across devices, photo organization and management.
Notable updates
The popular note-taking application Wunderlist is out of beta featuring Cortana support and more.
Unstream, a third-party Twitch client for Windows is now available as a universal application.