Why trust GreenbotGot big plans for the weekend? Capture share a quick moment with Instagram’s Boomerang, which leads our look at the week’s top new Android apps games. The app grabs several photos turns them into charming little video loops—ideal for pets, kids, other shenanigans. so new this week is KT Kustom dget Maker, which lives up to its billing by letting you create intricate, original widgets.
And if you don’t have big plans? That’s cool, too: we’ve got new games to keep you entertained. une is a quietly dazzling puzzler about trimming a growing tree, Trick Shot is a ball-flinging game that’s tough to put down, the studio behind Zen nball has just released four big digital tables based on hit animated series. Make room on your home screen— then fill it up with all of this interesting stuff.
Boomerang from Instagram
A bubble that keeps blowing? Ever-flowing water? Use your imagination—Boomerang will do the rest.
Instagram just dipped its toes into GIF-like looping video bits, but it’s not a feature of the main platform: Boomerang is its own separate app. The design is dead simple: just capture something with your phone camera within the app—ideally a person or thing that’s moving— Boomerang will collect 10 consecutive photos, snap them all together, spit out a short, repeating video clip.
It might seem like a riff on Apple’s ve otos from the ione 6s, but there’s no still image involved. However, it has the same kind of jittery, low-frame rate look that gives it that charming, GIF-like feel. Boomerang is a cute way to capture (briefly!) share something active from the world around you, you can shoot it right into Instagram or Facebook, or save the clip locally for sharing elsewhere.
une
Trim with precision to help guide your growing tree around hazards sprout flowers.
Amidst the constant crush of cy-coated puzzlers flooding the ay Store weekly, une ($4) is a welcome anomaly. It’s quiet, meditative, elegantly designed, serving up a smart, touch-centric experience. From a bare, shaded plot of dirt, you’ll draw up a tiny sprout—which continues rising branching off as it grows. Your goal is to have it reach the daylight spawn enough flowers to pass the stage.
Doing so requires trimming your unnecessary branches: une is like a strategic bonsai tree simulator, only your snips must be done quickly. Cutting excess sections allows the tree to grow higher, plus you’ll need to work around poisonous red orbs deal with wind, walls, other hazards. It’s an easy premise to grasp, but there’s real depth appeal to carefully trimming your tree to encourage its skyward ascent.
KT Kustom dget Maker
nt a cool new home screen widget? Make your own—or customize an existing one—with KT.
dgets are seriously hy home screen additions, but they can also be eyesores, or simply clash with your wallpaper nearby apps. But why stick with the stock options when you can design customize your own? That’s the appeal of KT Kustom dget Maker, which lets you choose from a library of included widgets, grab more options, then make them work for you.
The editor is a bit rugged, but it’s designed to provide the level of detail needed to adjust every little variable: colors, text, positioning, etc. You can create clocks, battery or memory meters, map widgets, music players, more. Starting a widget from scratch can be overwhelming, but work with an existing one to learn the tools you’ll be off running before too long.
Trick Shot
Flick the ball cross your fingers—Trick Shot gets trickier by the level.
Trick Shot ($2) is a game worthy of obsession. I should know: every time I go to play a level or two, I get sucked in for 20 minutes. And it’s happening often. Taking cues from the basketball game of H-O-R-S-E, Trick Shot challenges you to pull fling a ball from anywhere in the starting grid into a box elsewhere on the screen. Expectedly, that stops being an obvious task pretty quickly, as buttons, barriers, fans, moving boxes impede your clear path.
ile a very different kind of game, I’m not surprised in the least that Trick Shot comes from one of the designers of Monument Valley. ke that puzzle adventure, it’s perfectly designed for touch— lets you continue launching the ball endlessly until you succeed—plus it’s trimmed down to its barest, most essential elements. And it’s spectacular, compulsive fun.
Balls of Glory nball
Each table has its own distinctive design surprises, all inspired by the show in question.
Balls of Glory nball turns four well-known Fox FXX animated series into digital tables, but you’ve got a few options here. Each is available as a separate $2 app: Family Guy nball, Archer nball, Bob’s Burgers nball, American Dad nball. Or, if you’re already playing on the Zen nball platform, you can simply buy each table within as an in-app purchase for the same fee.
Zen Studios’ output is a known quantity by now: the studio has had success with everything from Star rs to South rk, these tables similarly don’t disappoint. Each is uniquely built around the source show looks sounds the part, with authentic voice acting various cut-scenes mini-game moments within. In typical Zen fashion, each table plays realistically, but has those extra digital touches effects that wouldn’t be possible at your local arcade.
