Puzzlejuice is a really great puzzle game (really, a big mishmash of different puzzle games) that's available on the App Store right now. It was put together by developers Greg Wohlwend and Asher Vollmer, and Wohlwend has just published a post on his personal blog that's pretty spectacular: He calls it "The Puzzlejuice emails," and it's basically all of the email communication between the two developers as they work out the look and feel of this crazy game. It's really long (he really did include everything, from first contact all the way up to release), but it's also a fascinating read, especially if you've been involved in iOS development, or game development of any kind. You can see the two devs hashing out everything as they go, from the look of the graphics to the meaning of the game's name, all the way up to the icon and setting up the Read More

By Carter Dotson on January 3rd, 2012 On this episode of The Portable Podcast, host Carter Dotson assembles a panel of podcast regulars to discuss their favorite titles of the past year. You’re the best around! No one’s ever gonna keep you down! On This Episode: Who We Are: Music: How to Listen: Apps Mentioned on This Episode: FREE! $0.99 Released: 2011-09-01 :: Category: Games $1.99 Released: 2011-11-17 :: Category: Games $0.99 $6.99 Released: 2011-01-25 :: Category: Games $0.99 $9.99 iPad Only App - Designed for the iPad Released: 2011-01-25 :: Category: Games $0.99 Released: 2011-02-10 :: Category: Games $0.99 $4.99 Released: 2011-04-21 :: Category: Games $1.99 Released: 2011-06-01 :: Category: Games $4.99 Released: 2011-12-15 :: Category: Games FREE! Released: 2011-06-23 :: Category: Games FREE! Released: 2011-08-04 :: Category: Games $0.99 Released: 2011-04-28 :: Category: Games $1.99 Released: 2011-04-20 :: Category: Games $1.99 Released: 2011-04-07 :: Category: Games $2.99 Released: 2009-05-11 Read More

By Carter Dotson on December 26th, 2011 As 2011 winds down to a close, 148Apps takes a look back at some of the finest games released this past year. In what was another fantastic year in the world of iOS apps & games, we are here to bring you the fifty titles that we, the staff of 148Apps, thought were the best of the year. Here are the gaming titles 16 – 25 in our Best Games of 2011: : Zach Gage’s second iOS release is another smash, as SpellTower proved to be a fun take on the ever-popular word game genre. It comes with some special restrictions to force more creative word usage, and the requirement to make words out of nearby tiles, managing the tile stack as well as trying to form words causes the game to have a deeper dynamic than many word games have. $1.99 Released: 2011-11-17 Read More

SpellTower is developed by Zach Gage, creator of SynthPond, Bit Pilot, and Halcyon. SpellTower is a word puzzle app for use on the iPad and iPod touch. (An iPad was used for this review.) SpellTower is like a hybrid of Boggle and Tetris. The main concept is to create words by swiping a finger across tiles stacked in horizontal rows. Words can be spelled horizontally forward and backward, vertically, and diagonally. Special blocks have individualized functions that make it more interesting. The first thing players will notice when starting the app is a main menu screen with different colored banners running across the screen. At the very top is a green tutorial link that familiarizes players with the rules and play. The tutorial is brief and easy to understand. Users should find that using it once is all they need to grasp it. Below the tutorial are four playing modes: Tower Read More

SpellTower [$.99] is one of those rare titles that come along and completely knock your socks off. Mixing elegance and good word game play, we recommend it to anyone looking for a good game, no less a good word game. And now it's an even better value: version 2.0 of SpellTower adds in achievements and bug fixes on top of Universal support, for free. Oh! And the price? You probably noticed that it's lower, too. As of yesterday, the game's price has been knocked down to $.99 instead of its usual $1.99. Deal! They happen! I'm excited! If you're still on the fence after this reduction, take a moment and educate yourself with our review of the game. Spoiler: it's pretty good. Howdy Test your trivia skills in a fast paced quiz game. Game includes 1500 questions in 9 different categories. Each question has a Wikipedia link which is viewable in Read More

Thursday on the App Store brings another round of new app releases, as well as some big updates. We've got news on some of those releases elsewhere, but here are a few of the app updates currently waiting for you in the App Store on your iOS device. There's lots of new content for some of your favorite apps this week. Not all of these are live just yet, but stay tuned, they'll be posted soon. Read More

It's a good time to be a word game fan. Every few weeks a new genre standout arrives, ready to tide you over until the next big hit. Now App Store superstar Zach Gage (Unify [$1.99/Free], Bit Pilot [99¢], Halcyon [$1.99]) has thrown his hat into the word game ring with SpellTower [$1.99] . Those of us who fit in the Venn diagram intersection of iPad owners and word game fans benefit -- SpellTower is elegant, clever and fun. Not that it's entirely unique. We've all played any number of games that make use of SpellTower's main mechanic. Presented with a grid of letters, you spot a word and trace a path through its letters to select it. You can trace in any direction, loop diagonally back on your path, and make words of any length past two. And if that were all there was to it, this would be a Read More

Believe it or not, we are getting into the start of the holiday season, and that means tons of action on the App Store as people head over to buy apps for their new devices. There are a bunch of exciting new apps to check out today, so here's a quick list: Man, that's a whole lot of great games! This isn't even all of the app releases out this week, and my guess is that we haven't even seen the biggest flood of new apps -- that usually comes around Thanksgiving, and then ramps up again right as Apple freezes the store before Christmas. It's going to be a busy holiday season in iOS gaming for sure. Read More

iPad Only App $1.99 Our Review By Jennifer Allen on November 17th, 2011 Rating: :: FANTASTIC SpellTower is a bewitchingly simple word puzzle game that hooks players immediately, never letting go. Developer: Price: $1.99 Version Reviewed: 1.0 Device Reviewed On: iPad 2 Graphics / Sound Rating: Game Controls Rating: Gameplay Rating: Replay Value Rating: Overall Rating: SpellTower is one of those word games. The kind of game that turns five minutes into a good hour or more with the player only noticing where time went because the iPad has warned that it’s running low on battery power. Be warned, this genuinely happened on more than one occasion as I played SpellTower. Like so many great word games, SpellTower is immensely simple to play. Complicated features are rarely needed in quality cerebral games and this is no different. The tutorial promises to take less than a minute to play and it’s right. Read More