Friday App Wrap

Welcome to the Friday App Wrap, the place where we share with you some of the standouts from the new mobile phone apps we find each week. You'll find a variety of apps below, plus you can scroll back via the page navigation at the bottom after the last app listed to see the applications highlighted in previous weeks.

Friday, 30 March 2012

• Paper

  
  Because we're slightly stationery-crazy, new notebook apps always catch our attention. Paper is one of the most elegant we've seen. The app itself is free to download, and includes the pen tool and an array of colours to get you started — we love how smooth it is to draw, and the touch controls are genuinely clever.
  Additional tools are purchasable for AU$1.99 each, and you can get pencil, pen, texta and watercolour tools. They all look gorgeous. One minor niggle is that the colour palette is quite small — we're hoping to see an expansion in the future, but in the meantime, it's one of the most stylish notebook apps we've seen.
  
  
  Platform: iPad
  Price: Free

• Sydney Royal Easter Show 2012

  
  The Sydney Royal Easter Show is starting real soon. It's such a massive event that a guide is, well, essential. This free app for iPhone is it. It gives you a comprehensive set of tools for exploring the show, including a full program so you can figure out when to go; an interactive showground map (seriously, that place is nuts to navigate); lists of carnival attractions, food and shopping; special bargains and offers; and the ability to share what catches your attention via Twitter, email and Facebook.
  
  Platform: iPhone
  Price: Free

• Rinth Island

  
  Rinth Island (a play on "labyrinth", we assume) is a 3D puzzler. You're a little dude (or dudette — hooray for options!) who has to find your way to the exit point on each of over 60 island levels. They are circular towers that you have to climb, solving as you go. It looks stunning and is fun to play in its own right, but its bonus content is what makes it extraordinary. As well as the ability to customise your avatar with costumes, tools and even pets, you can build and share your own levels — and play levels others have created, which makes gameplay pretty much infinite.
  
  Platform: iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad
  Price: AU$0.99

• Swordigo

  
  When we saw our character given a sword and told "Take this. It's dangerous to go unarmed", we knew that we'd find something to love in Swordigo. And there is. A side-scrolling action adventure, it sees you fighting to save the world with your trusty sword and magic spells, solving puzzles and defeating foes. Sure, it's not exactly something new — but it's so smoothly executed, and built with such affection — that it really is a standout in the genre.