It’s a varied selection for this week’s Five for Friday. We’re covering stuff like a convenient and quick-to-respond note-taking app, a fun music-making app for kids, and a Hidden Object game based on a classic piece of literature. Without further ado, let’s take a look at what’s on offer and get on with enjoying the weekend!
Inkflow
At first glance, Inkflow looks to be a pretty run-of-the-mill note-taking app. It very nearly is but its great benefit comes from its speed and precision. Writing or sketching with a finger is frequently a little sluggish, but with Inkflow, there’s hardly any lag at all. Extra functionality comes from the ability to create numerous pages of notes for later reference.
Pride and Prejudice: Hidden Anthologies
A Hidden Object game based on Pride and Prejudice? Yup, that’s exactly what we have here. Keeping closely to the plotline of the book, the game offers a great new take on the classic novel. It’s quite delightful to look at and offers some fun, casual gaming.
Pride and Prejudice: Hidden Anthologies
Universal App – Designed for iPhone and iPad
Buy Now: $ 5.99
Released: 2012-05-13 :: Category: Games
Morton Subotnick’s Pitch Painter
Finger painting has provided hours of fun for kids over the years. Morton Subotnick’s Pitch Painter brings that idea to the iPad along with the ability to play musical notes, all at the touch of the screen. It’s aimed at the younger end of the market and should provide a great introduction to the iPad.
Morton Subotnick’s Pitch Painter
iPad Only App – Designed for the iPad
Buy Now: $ 2.99
Released: 2012-05-15 :: Category: Music
Hiragana Pixel Party
Learning the many characters of Japanese Hiragana and Katakana is tough for those more used to English. Hiragana Pixel Party is a fun way of making a game out of it all with players progressing through numerous different worlds and tapping in time to the entertaining soundtrack. After all, the best form of education is the kind that doesn’t feel like work.
Hiragana Pixel Party
Universal App – Designed for iPhone and iPad
Buy Now: FREE
Released: 2012-05-14 :: Category: Education
Storypanda
Kids love to read books but they also love to use their imagination to create their own story. Storypanda offers the best of both worlds with the ability to read new stories through the service and create their own along with fun animations and pictures. It should be an ideal tool for families to use together.
Storypanda – Making Kids Books Collaborative
iPad Only App – Designed for the iPad
Buy Now: FREE
Released: 2012-05-09 :: Category: Books
Apps mentioned in this post: Hiragana Pixel Party, Inkflow, Morton Subotnick’s Pitch Painter, Pride and Prejudice: Hidden Anthologies, Storypanda – Making Kids Books Collaborative
About: Five For Friday: Week Of May 18 is a post from 148Apps
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We can all do with a better memory. Only a daily basis, we all need to remember various dates and events, sequences of numbers, and more. Memorize IDi is an app that helps users train themselves to expand their memory’s capacity by training with the app.
:: WORTH EXPLORING
I guess there are enough games like Gene Effect out there to say there’s an exploration genre. These games tend to be about as vague as the genre they would belong to would be, but in general they involve a lot of moving about a big open space and the occasional bit of collecting, photographing, or, as in Gene Effect‘s case, scavenging. There is one thing beyond exploration they often share, and Gene Effect is no different. It too has absolutely stonking visuals. 
How some birds that evolved without being able to fly is beyond me. How the birds of Non Flying Soldiers made it this far is an even bigger mystery, because not only can they not fly, but they hatch into hazardous situations. Their natural response is to run forward unceasingly without any thought put into whether stopping would be a good idea or not. Since letting them just run to their doom is not an option, the player must try to lay down springboards and turbo pads in order to get them going faster or higher, safety nets to stop them in mid-air, and barriers to change their course.
As I played Non Flying Soldiers, I had to wonder why the game wasn’t set on a grid or track system of some sort, especially as many of the levels involve having the birds in three rows. There’s just a fundamental awkwardness of trying to get the birds to hit just the exact ramp or speed lane because it’s so easy to misplace the items. If it was on a grid, then it would also solve the problem with the game taking place in three dimensions, but only offering essentially two-dimensional views. The top camera view makes it impossible to tell the height necessary to make some gaps, and the “Perspective” view makes moving items on the depth axis much more difficult. It’s just frustrating to play, having to scroll back to the beginning of the level just to get the birds on their way.
Be wary of strangers bearing gifts. That’s one lesson petty thief Bob should have picked up before he accepted a stranger’s help breaking out of prison. But he takes the help and finds himself in debt in Robbery Bob, a top-down stealth game from Chillingo. To pay his way out of what one can only assume would be a solid thrashing at best, Bob is now commited to a series of petty burglaries to repay the favor.
I was all set to love Sonic 4 Episode II, then I fell to my death. Then I got crushed. Then it all happened again and again ad infinitum.
Sega deserves credit for making the game universal this time around. As well, the “Episode Metal” that was promised to Episode I and II owners is here, part of the game’s “lock-on” functionality, which opens up 4 challenging new levels based on Episode I zones. Not only is the name a retro Sonic callback, but the game actually starts at the point where Metal Sonic is defeated in Sonic CD. It’s fantastic fanservice.
It’s not an organization that many of us would automatically expect an official app from. Regardless, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO to you and me) has recently released its own news app. 
Lots of games are copycats, and many copycats breathe new life into a genre. But Mole Kart I by Shanghai-based Taomee Entertainment Network is a such a blatant replica of Mario Kart it almost defies reviewing. It arrived on the App Store on May 4th and everything except the characters are virtually identical to Nintendo’s classic. What’s curious is that 
Until they do, which isn’t likely anytime soon, Mole Kart I and other clones will have to suffice. While I can’t recommend this one on its own merits, if you are a die hard Mario Kart fan itching to see it poorly reproduced, it’s best to pick this up now, lest it be pulled again.
