Best apps of the week: Globosome, SXPD, Elevate, Notifyr, and more!

May 27, 2014

Once again we've gathered together the best iPhone apps and best iPad apps and games released this week! We'll regularly dig up the best, freshest social, music, photography and productivity apps for iOS, not to mention action games, shooter games, puzzle games, and anything in between. Come on and dig in to see our favorite releases over the last seven days!

Globosome: Path of the Swarm

Globosome is a beautiful tilt-based platforming game. Players have to guide tiny, intelligent glowing spheres through rich forests, treacherous cliff sides, foreboding caves, and other striking settings to find and connect with fellow globos that follow you around. The game is based on an animated short made in Germany which attempted to distill the birth and expansion of mankind into a few short minutes. Globosome: Path of the Swarm is accessible, whimsical, and overall a joy to play. No in-app purchases or ads are a big bonus.

Download now - $2.99

Elevate

Elevate is a series of brain games that test focus, processing, precision, and comprehension. These mostly involve handling words, so you'll be speed reading, trying to remember parts of passages, and completing tasks associated with 14 different skills with the ultimate goal of improving reading, writing, listening, and speaking skills. New challenges are presented every day based on performance in previous exercises. Whether or not you believe in the science of "brain training" (and there are good reasons not to, Elevate is a sharply-designed, challenging collection of games that offer something a little more stimulating than your average smartphone and tablet fare. Elevate operates on a subscription model whereby you can play for $10/month or $60/year.

Download now - $9.99/month

SXPD

SXPD is a comic book-style racing and shooting game set in a dystopian future. Players are members of a privatized all-female police force desperately trying to track down a weapon of mass destruction before it's too late. SXPD meshes a full-blown comic narrative and the strong outlines of the art style with a fast-paced racing game for a really unique experience. David Perry is behind the game, and he's worked on some well-known (and twisted) titles like Earthworm Jim and MDK in the past. This is only episode one, with the eventual goal of six episodes being released. Best of all, SXPD is being published by a non-profit company called OneBigGame which donates at least 80% of sales to charity. SXPD is a ridiculous, over-the-top game with a dash of graphic novel style and philanthropy. Needless to say, it's not something you see every day in the App Store.

Download Now - $1.99

Notifyr

Notifyr is getting a lot of attention this week as a simple, streamlined way of getting notifications from your iPhone on your Mac. Third party notifications pop up in the native area by pairing up an OS X app and an iPhone app over Bluetooth Low Energy. Mavericks supports notifications for many native apps (and websites), so Notifyr lets you mute certain notification types on an app-by-app basis. Android users already enjoy this kind of functionality through Pushbullet and a Chrome extension, but it's good to see something tailor built for iOS and OS X. If you're annoyed by checking your iPhone every five minutes to see what's new, Notifyr will save you a ton of time.

Download now - $3.99

Jutsu

Jutsu is a new goal-setting app where users can post, subscribe to, and track progress towards attaining life goals. Each of these goals, or jutsus, are comprised of multiple achievements, each reached through steps. Every step can have a due date set and an established type (such as performing an action, reaching a target, or acquiring knowledge). After an individual achievement within a Jutsu is reached, it can be shared out to your social networks. Photos can be added to each Jutsu to give it a real identity. The free version lets you track two Jutsus at a time, and for $2.99 you can tackle multiple goals, keep some private, and publish public ones. Though Jutsu isn't exactly a hardcore organizational tool, it's simple, straightforward, and sharply-designed.

Download now - Free / $2.99

djay + Spotify

djay, the Apple Design Award-winning music mixing app for iPhone and iPad, has just been updated to version 2.5 and the game-changing news is this — they've partnered with streaming music service Spotify and their 20 million track library and, what's more, created technology that lets you quickly, perfectly mix and match all of it. Imagine an old school DJ crate filled with vinyl. Now image it's bottomless. Now imagine a selection of perfectly matched songs is always on the very top just waiting for you to grab and spin. That's djay 2.5.

djay for iPhone - free on sale - Download now
djay for iPad - $4.99 on sale - Download now

Pixelmator

Pixelmator's 3.2 update – known as 'Sandstone'– is now live in the Mac App Store bringing with it, among other features the brand new, and very hot Repair tool. With it you can simply 'paint' over areas of the image you're working on to remove blemises, even entire objects with ease.

$29.99 - Download Now

WWDC

The official WWDC 2014 app has been refreshed for this year's developer conference, bringing the app closer to the even flatter iOS 7 design standards than last year's redesign. This version is all flat, white, and orange, though the general navigation system follows the straight-forward arrangement of before. The app, in addition to the mostly complete WWDC 2014 schedule also includes a map of the venue, news updates, Passbook integration, and streaming videos from previous WWDC sessions.

Free — Download Now

Your favorite iPhone and iPad apps from this week?

A lot happens in the iOS App Store in a week, so feel free to leave a comment with your favorite recent release on iPhone and iPad! We're always looking for more, so don't be shy to drop us a line when you find something exciting!