Top Apps of the Month - September 2015

I imagine I'm not the person you expected to see (or read) here. As you're doubtlessly aware, Megan is usually tasked with compiling all the best apps for each month, but she's come down with a severe case of super-busy, so I've stepped in.

It's been an interesting month for new releases, so with that in mind I won't waste any more time with preamble and get straight into it.

For Gamers

PewDiePie: Legend of the Brofist

£3.99 

iOS/Android

Depending on what you think about the most popular let's player there is, you might have been hotly anticipating this, or dreading it.

Forbes

Regardless of what you think of the man himself, it's hard to deny that he's put his name to a beautiful, addictive little platformer. You can (eventually) play as PewDiePie, but a small pool of other YouTube gaming stars are also playable as you make your way across gorgeous 8-bit vistas to find and defeat the 'Barrel King'.

Being that it's a game born of YouTube culture, it's littered with references and homages to gaming both in modern and retro contexts. Happily, one thing it completely avoids is freemium content, with all the items in the game bought with currency you earn by actually playing the game, how novel. 

Freeze 2 - Brothers

£1.39 

iOS/Android

If you never played Freeze, Frozen Gun's screen titling 2013 puzzler, you missed out. It was a tight, artful little title that got a lot from a relatively simple premise. And now the sequel has arrived.

Android Tapp

The new one improves significantly on everything the original offered - more levels, more puzzle elements and tighter physics. The main thing though is that now, rather than guiding just one little eyeball critter through the icy mazes, you've got to save two of them. 

This addition makes the whole process of spinning the scenery, thereby sending anything not bolted down tumbling around, all the more dastardly. Often the little guys will roll off in total opposite directions, requiring you to carefully make sure that you don't lose one of them whilst focusing too hard on the other.

Mirrativ

Free

Andriod

This isn't a game, as such, but rather a way for mobile games to get in on the increasingly popular live-streaming boom.

Google Play

Once installed, Mirrative allows you to stream video and audio from your Android games out into the wider world, you can even use the front-facing camera to provide a picture-in-picture feed of yourself reacting in real time. 

You need Android 5.0 in order to be able to use it properly, but that's been out for a while now so if you haven't upgraded yet, this is as good an excuse as any. 

For iPhotographers

Flow for Instagram

Free 

iOS

The smooth, intuitive iPad Instagram companion has finally made the jump to the small screen and the results speak for themselves.

idownloadblog.com

In essence, it's just a more fluid, optimal way of scrolling through Instagram and liking the photos, although you can't post any on the platform, being that it's third party. That also means that it's completely devoid of any ads, pleasingly.

It just makes the whole process of looking through the platform easier, deeper and altogether more appealing, so if like me you spend far more time looking through Instagram than actually posting, it's a must.

Vhoto

Free

iOS

The GIF-creation market is becoming saturated, fast. With the image format enjoying an unprecedented

applenapps.com

spike in popularity, hundreds of new editing apps have flooded the market. Vhoto might not be the best overall, but it is perhaps the most comprehensive, and intuitive. 

Vhoto allows you to single out the best moments from your mobile videos and turn them into GIFs. From there you can add animated text and a wide compliment of weird and wonderful filters.

Online sharing is remarkably easy and the GIF quality is of a consistently high standard. This is by far the easiest way of sharing that moment when your dog ran into a glass door.

Seedling Comic Studio

Free

iOS

idownloadblog.com

This is certainly a more child-oriented app, but anyone could have fun playing around with it. It serves a purpose that many a photoshop user has attempted in the past - inserting yourself into a comic strip.

You can use any images you've taken or even just ones you've saved to your phone/tablet and the app comes with a really wide range of backgrounds, speech bubbles and all the other necessaries.

You can even use tools and filters to design your own superhero persona, which is making me excited justing thinking about it, never mind a 10-year-old.

For Readers

Arcadia by Ian Pears

Free (In-App Purchases)

iOS

recombu.com

Sure, Kindle's popularity is only gaining ground and reading books via iPad is almost as easy, but Ian Pears has taken it one step further by turning his latest novel, Arcadia, into a full interactive app. You can follow the plot from the perspective of one of ten characters, changing once you've been through their version of the story.

It's gimmicky, no doubts there, but it's an interesting approach and the characters you choose inform the way you absorb the story, since they meet and interact with each other along the way. 

You do have to spend some money once you have the app to get the full experience, which is a bit cheeky, but you wouldn't expect to get a book for free, so why this?

Hooked

Free 

iOS

Digital Spy

If you like your narrative much more bitesized, this might be the app for you. The developers of the app commission short stories and deliver them to you broken up into text message dialogue exchanges.  

They vary in length but never extend beyond a few pages and you are given one per day. You can subscribe to unlimited access for a small weekly fee, but I'd say one per day is more than enough. 

You're unlikely to stumble across the next Raymond Carver whilst going through this, but there are bound to be some engaging, fascinating little morsels of fiction waiting to be uncovered.

For Emailers

Microsoft Send

Free

iOS/Android

Engadget

This is Microsoft's killer app of the moment. We all need to send emails, and many of us often find ourselves needing to fire them out on the go, but the service hasn't really caught up with the technology as much as it should have by now. Microsoft are offering a solution.

Send turns email into something more akin to texting, so you can talk back and forth with contacts without having to keep changing the subject line or going through your hopelessly cluttered inbox. It's kind of a no-brainer, really.

At this stage it's a bit rough around the edges, and you need an Office 365 account to actually use it, but it's worth getting in on this now because it's going to become prevalent very quickly. 

Callum Davies

Callum is a film school graduate who is now making a name for himself as a journalist and content writer. His vices include flat whites and 90s hip-hop. Follow him @CallumAtSMF

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