If you’ve played other time management games, then Supermarket Management HD, the new iPad offering from G5 Entertainment, will be instantly familiar. You control Kate, an aspiring supermarket manager who must race around a busy store, stocking shelves and serving customers to keep them happy.

Both the controls and the game play work the way you’d expect them to, and there’s nothing inherently wrong with either. By tapping on areas where tasks need completing, Kate goes to the area and accomplishes the task. Sometimes tasks require Kate to perform a skill of some sort, like building appetizers or selecting the right cake as it scrolls by. Scoring is based on how happy the customers are when they check out – the happier they are, the more money and credit coins are earned. The early levels are easy, and the customers are not that demanding; but later levels become increasingly chaotic. The best strategy is to keep Kate moving, to monitor the shelves at all times (empty shelves earn angry customers the quickest) and get everything done. G5 has done a decent job of keeping it balanced, so that while any level can become chaotic, it’s always possible to complete it. They even threw in some mini-game challenge levels to mix things up.

Visually, the main game looks okay. It’s done in a cartoon style that’s typical for these games, and there’s nothing to complain about. The comic book “cut scenes” are less accomplished, however, and accompanied by scripted dialogue that is both badly written and badly translated. Just skip through these and get to the next level — there’s nothing in them worth reading.

There’s no way to review Supermarket Management HD without comparing it to the Diner Dash series in its look, its controls, its game play, and even its comic book presentations; and in every category Supermarket Management HD feels like a copycat. This isn’t to say that task management games aren’t a dime a dozen in the App Store. But Supermarket Management HD just seems like a particularly obvious one, and one that does not do what some other copycats do: apply top-notch development to the imitation.

Overall, Supermarket Management HD isn’t a terrible game, but it is not a great game, either. If you’ve conquered Diner Dash, Diner Dash: Grilling Green, and Supermarket Mania, and you’re shopping for one more task management game to scratch that itch, then Supermarket Management HD might make you a happy customer. If you’re looking for something fresh, however, then you might get better service elsewhere, because this store’s shelves are empty.

[ Supermarket Management HD Review is a post from 148Apps ]

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In the game “Black White West” you have to save three brave cowboys from angry Indians.

The rules of the game is simple: tapping the screen by finger to jump over cacti and survive in the saddle as long as possible. Head-on collision with cactus rides down one of the cowboys. At the same time it is possible to jump on top of cactuses, as the horse Bolivar is not afraid of wild prairie nature. Once all three cowboy fall out of the saddle – the game is over.

Game Features:

- Humorous atmosphere of wild west
- Unique black and white visual style
- Entirely hand drawn design and animation
- Intuitive interface
- Table of records to compete with your friends
- Unique Country soundtrack and funny in-game sounds from professional musician Eugene Viitman

“Black White West” – is the first project in a series of ”Black White” mini-games by Submarine and Unusual Things studios.

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Written and Recorded by: Michelle Lopez

iCasual is a free audio podcast that we deliver to you!
Click HERE; to subscribe in iTunes | Click HERE; for the RSS Feed.

Hello everyone this is Michelle from The Portable Gamer with your iCasual Report for Plunderland from Johnny Two Shoes LLP for all devices running current iOS software.

A’hoy Matey and welcome to Plunderland, where you control a ship of Pirates bent on plundering all the worlds treasures. To set sail, just tilt your device in the direction you want to travel. The more you tilt the faster you go and of course to stop just straighten up. Your ship comes equipped with cannons to destroy your enemy. When you touch the screen you get a helpful dotted line which shows if your aim is true, simply let go to shoot. Sink the ships to unlock the treasure and tap to collect. Each level has a goal to be reached in order to unlock the next, but you should try and collect as much as you can because you use the money for more powerful upgrades.

Listen to the full iCasual Podcast on The Portable Gamer

[ iCasual: Plunderland is a post from 148Apps ]

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In the Incident, you play an everyman with a problem: heavy things keep dropping in your general vicinity. Your only chance to make it end it is to climb up the pile of objects until you reach the source and put a stop to the shenanigans. That thankless task — climbing higher and higher on a constant pile of falling detritus — is the sole goal of The Incident. Luckily, it’s also a whole lot of fun.

You control the hero by tilting the device left and right, and jump him by tapping. It’s simple and controls well, which means that you can quickly get to the job of staying alive. Like another popular jumping game out there, Doodle Jump, the premise is so simple that if anything in the game were poorly executed, it could easily be called repetitive — dodge, jump, jump, dodge, grab a coin, jump. But The Incident does such a good job of keeping you on your toes, watching all corners of the screen, and scrambling for precious power-ups, that its simple premise is practically addictive.

The first few levels ramp up nicely, so that by the time things get really hectic, you’ll be well versed in the art of dodging and jumping. Along the way you’re earning enough extra lives that you’ll probably never run out, and hitting frequent checkpoints so that you can hold onto your progress. There are only eight total levels, beginning on the street and ending in space, but each level packs enough challenge to make it feel like plenty of game.

The Incident’s 8-bit style helps in that it’s clean and well-executed. There’s a large variety of pixelated, brightly-colored objects being thrown at you, many of them eliciting a little smile the first time they appear — everything from taxis and sofas to Egyptian sarcophagi, garden gnomes, and Easter Island statues. There are not so many that you’ll never see a repeat, but there are enough to keep the pile interesting. And when you die, you’re granted a little death trophy of the object that killed you; “Death by Midcentury-Modern Door at 575m” is quite a way to go.

Any complaints about the Incident are minor. The aforementioned small number of levels is a limitation on replayability, and the lack of any online leaderboards or other competitive components will disappoint some. And yes, if the core game play doesn’t appeal to you, you’ll get bored very quickly, as they’re nothing else to the game but jump, jump, dodge, jump. But none of these are significant drawbacks.

There’s something sweet about seeing a simple concept executed well. The Incident is a great game that offers up a fun time with well-crafted retro sensibilities, and it’s sure to appeal to a lot of iOS gamers. Download it today.

[ The Incident Review is a post from 148Apps ]

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Ever taken a photo on your iPhone and wished you could brighten up the image, or even change the color completely? ReColor, a new photography editing app, is boasting that it can do just that.

This is the first app from German developer Sebastian Heymann. The app is designed to change the color of people and objects in a natural way, so no masking the highlights or lowlights of an image or going ‘over the lines’.

ReColor certainly does what it describes. After uploading a picture to the app (you can use the camera inside the app too), all you need to do is select the “add” button from the side menu and tap where you want the new coloration to go. A point mark will be then added to the image for the chosen area. The points can be moved around the image and also removed with the side menu options and tapping on the selected point. The color, contrast and visibility can be altered on the menu at the bottom of the app.

The app is definitely easy to use, with settings and options kept to a minimum so the user doesn’t get too confused. The side menu could do with a little more explanation, but simple tapping around when you first get the app sorts the problem. The coloration is particularly striking with bold objects, especially linear objects. It’s easy to get carried away snapping random objects and changing the color for fun.

The appearance of the app, however, could be neatened. Although the app is clearly aiming for simplicity, which it does well, the app’s design is a little too simple, especially the random hand icon on the loading page. Also, the color change does have a flaw — it struggles with more obscure shapes, rough edges or small areas. It doesn’t matter how many points you add to the area or how visible/contrasted the change is, the color barely changes. The app seems to merely tint rough edges.

However it could be argued that it’s a fault with the iPhone 3G/3GS’s camera being occasionally low in photo quality in bad lighting. The tint can have its bonuses though; if you are trying to give yourself a tan in holiday photos, you can rest assured it will definitely look natural and subtle!

Overall, ReColor is a great app for changing the color on clear, bold images, and you are bound to spend hours fiddling with the pictures already stored on your iPhone. The app is also superb in not taking away the natural proportions of a photograph. However, the app is hindered somewhat by the limitations of the camera which can be very frustrating, and the appearance could be improved. Overall, this app has a lot of potential, and is a wise investment at $1.99.

[ ReColor Review is a post from 148Apps ]

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Facebook was notoriously late in the game getting their iPhone app into the App Store, and so far there’s been no sign of a Facebook iPad app. So it’s left to third party developers to fill the gap. One recent entry into the App Store is Friendly — Facebook Browser, a usable-enough app that is light on features.

Friendly is a pretty close cypher for what I would expect an official Facebook app to look and feel like. It carries over the site’s blue-and-white color scheme, post layout, and pretty much everything else. What it has over simply visiting Facebook through Safari is readability — everything here is optimized for reading on the iPad, with larger fonts, less clutter, and no ads for Pirate Bay or Mafia Wars. There’s give and take, though, because you also lose the little sidebar touches, like Friends Online or the Information snapshot in a profile. But if you’ve simply not been happy with the way Facebook looks on the iPad, Friendly could offer you a more palatable choice.

Where Friendly falls short of just accessing Facebook from Safari is in the amount of things it doesn’t do. It is limited to feed and message services — no access to games or quizzes, no photo uploading, no chat. In fact, even some types of posts don’t make it into the Friendly feed, like “tagged in an album” posts; while these aren’t the most important things in the Live Feed, they’re still something that should be there, and it’s strange that they are excluded. All in all, a lot is missing from the Friendly browser experience, which will annoy dedicated users who like those features.

There were a couple of times I wanted more in terms of interface, too. For example, I’d love to be able to swipe through photo albums instead of static button taps to progress. Also, there’s no way to refresh the live feed to check for new posts. Only by navigating away and then back can you bring up new posts. A Refresh button would be most welcome.

So, should you buy Friendly, or should you continue using Facebook on the web? It depends upon what’s important to you. If you prefer the fullest Facebook experience possible on the iPad, then stick with Safari. But if you favor readability and less clutter, and if you’re less interested in the more ancillary Facebook features, then Friendly might be the app for you.

[ Friendly — Facebook Browser Review is a post from 148Apps ]

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[ Let’s Golf! 2 Review is a post from 148Apps ]

Here’s the idea: make an app that pulls content from popular social networks and formats into a slick, ‘zine inspired interface. It’s a simple idea. But is it practical? Flipboard certainly thinks so, and they’ve invested quite a bit of design and promotion into it. The result is a social networking ‘zine that is good-looking and easy to browse, but still awaiting some more advanced features.

Flipboard works like this: connect the app to your Facebook and Twitter accounts. Select up to seven other Twitter feeds or lists that you want to treat as “news,” then browse them via an interface that looks less like Twitteriffic and more like Newsweek. In other words, turn your Facebook friends into something cooler! The appeal is not the content, but the presentation. At a basic level, it is just another feed reader; the big selling point is the interface–the way you read your feeds.

And on that level, boy does Flipboard make my Facebook friends look good. Mimicking the look of slick modern ‘zine, Flipboard really turns mundane links and albums of Little League photos into very appealing things. The very posts that you might gloss over as you browse your friends status updates become front-and-center eye-catchers here, complete with headlines and graphics. It does all this through a responsive and intuitive touch control that lets you flip pages just like a book. Everything moves smoothly, and I did not detect any real glitches in the interface. It’s really well done and a treat to use.

Having said that, I also have to say this: right now, Flipboard feels more like a novelty than a killer app. It doesn’t mine the social networks popular links, doesn’t follow hashtags or trending topics, doesn’t allow you to make new status updates or create new tweets within the app. It’s great at what it does, but what is does is limited.

In the case of Flipboard, though, I am willing to temper my judgment of these limitations and put some faith in the future. This is not a small developer firing off their first app, but instead a major venture by a group with a lot of capital behind it. And the developers are promising that more dynamic feed sorting and other features are in the pipeline, as users begin to fuel and shape Flipboard content. If they realize the apps full potential, then it will be a beautiful thing.

I would be remiss if I didn’t mention one small but important issue here. Flipbook, for all its slickness, apparently wasn’t ready to handle the level of early interest it has generated. After dealing with Facebook lockouts in the first launch days, they’ve initiated an invite system, which means you may have to wait a couple days before you can make use of the apps primary selling point. And that sucks, just a bit, though it’s certainly one of those things that won’t be a lingering issue once the hype dies down.

So, is Flipboard a novelty social network reader, or a new paradigm in popular media? The jury is still out. If the developers follow through on the potential the app holds, it will certainly rise above the status of eye-candy and become a singular way to consume your daily dose of social media. I, for one, can’t wait.

[ Flipboard Review is a post from 148Apps ]

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