Best Windows apps this week
One-hundred and sixty-one 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.
New additions have found their way to the Windows Store in surprising number in the last week.
App of the week is Series Tracker, a professionally looking TV show tracking, management and discovery application for the Windows platform.
Other applications and games of note are Two Dots, an interesting puzzle game, and Dynamic Theme, an app that provides you with the means to configure dynamic wallpapers for the desktop background and lockscreen.
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. Up to six applications and games are discounted and highlighted in Windows Store each week.
The following is this week's selection:
- Timeclock, a time tracking application for $0.99
- The Great Unknown: Houdini's Castle (Full), an adventure game for $0.99
- Runtastic PushUps Pro, a fitness app for $0.99
- Baseball Riot, an action game for $1.49
- Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary for $13.99
- MoBu - Financial Management, a finance application for $3.49
App of the week
The app for TV junkies. Keep track of your favorite TV shows, discover what is hot and upcoming, or browse shows by using the search or finding shows specific actors played a role in.
The option to look-up actors to find out which shows they stared in is without doubt one of the coolest features of the application, as it provides you with a different angle when it comes to TV show discovery.
The app taps into IMDB and Trakt, and supports features such as a watchlist that keeps track of your shows, lists of recent or missed episodes, and upcoming shows.
Other apps
Kingdom Tales 2 HD is a level-based strategy game in which you need to complete tasks to proceed to the next level.
You may be asked to construct certain buildings, or generate resources such as gold to move on.
Time management is essential in the game as you need to send out workers and other characters to collect taxes, clear roads or upgrade buildings.
The game is free, but needs to be unlocked if you want to play it fully.
Dynamic Theme is a free app for Windows that enables you to set a dynamic background and lock screen image.
The app supports individual bing images, local photos or a slideshow of photos, and may sync the settings across devices on top of that.
Two Dots is a unique puzzle game in which you need to connect two or more dots of the same color.
Each level of the game tasks you with goals that you are required to reach to proceed to the next level in line. This usually involves connecting a certain number of colored dots, for instance 50 green, red and blue dots.
You connect adjacent dots by drawing lines, and all dots that you have connected in this way are removed from the level in the process.
New dots are dropped from the top into the level when this happens. You may create special connections, squares or rectangular ones which offer more points and special effects.
You play as the head of a mafia family in Crime Coast: Mafia Wars. It is a city building game at its core with a single-player and multi-player component.
Create a base of operations by hiring gang members, constructing buildings and defenses, and upgrading those.
Once you have amassed an army of followers, you can send them out on missions to raid other towns and bring back loot.
You may raid the bases of other players in the game and form a cartel of mobsters with other players to increase your influence.
Nitro Nation is all about drag racing. You start as a new player with a generic car which you can upgrade or replace with another as you earn money racing your opponents.
The races are not that spectacular as you control gas and gears only but don't steer the cars yourself.
It comes down to hitting the sweet spot to get the most out of the car and while that sounds easy at first, it can be tricky to get it right all the time.
The game features lots of cards and upgrades, a story mode as well as other modes and tournaments that you can play compete in.
Tetris with a twist, that was my first impression when I started to play the game's first level.
The game keeps Tetris's main objective of clearing lines by filling them with objects dropped from the top, but mixes it up with an interesting sliding mechanic that allows you to move pieces already dropped to different positions
Notable updates
- Audiobooked for Windows 10 Beta is now available. It is an audiobook application to manage and play audiobooks.
- Eurosports.com is a universal app now supporting Cortana on top of it.
- Flipkart Beta for Windows 10. App for the popular shopping site.
- Moodflow, an app to find music matching moods has been reimagined for Windows 10 and acts more like a radio now.