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ERMO ($1.99) by Giuseppe La Torre is a relaxing puzzle game that will charm you with its simplicity. If you enjoyed recent releases like Campfire Cooking and FROST, then you'll love what ERMO brings to the table.

Let's face it — life gets hectic for all of us, and sometimes we just need a breather. Personally, for me, I like to do that by playing puzzle games. That's because I like to relax but keep my mind stimulated, and puzzles do just that. Though I feel like I've gone through every puzzle game there is on the App Store, I always keep my eye out for new releases. When I saw ERMO on the App Store, I knew that it was another game I had to have in my collection.

$3.99

Campfire Cooking

Layton Hawkes

$4.99

FROST

kunabi brother GmbH

Visually, ERMO is gorgeous with a simple and clean aesthetic. The game is rendered in 2D with soothing, atmospheric landscapes in the background. If you're a fan of minimalistic design, then ERMO is jam-packed with it. The color palette in ERMO ranges from soft pastels to bold and vibrant tones and even dark shades, depending on the theme you choose to use. Animations are subtle but smooth and fluid with no lag on my iPhone 8 Plus. There's an ambient soundtrack in the background that eases your mind and helps you focus on the puzzles in front of you. Sound effects are whimsical as well, adding to the overall delightful tone of the game.

Like other puzzle games, ERMO has a nice variety of modes and levels. There's a total of four modes available, though three of them must be unlocked first. While some modes include randomly generated stages, the game itself has about 60 unique levels, but hundreds of puzzles are possible.

So far, I have three of the four game modes available to play. They go as follows: Itinerary, Procedural, and Challenge. The final mode must be unlocked by solving level 10 in Itinerary (the main mode). The goal in ERMO is pretty simple: rearrange the blocks so that you have columns of the same color, and match them to the order that is displayed at the top. You only have a certain number of moves to get the right order too, so some thinking is involved.

But how do you move the block to begin with? Each column and row has directional arrows at the end. These arrows let you move the row or column in that direction, which is left and right for rows, up and down for columns, respectively. When you tap on an arrow, the entire line shifts in that direction. Blocks at the end move to the other end since it's all linear.

ERMO starts out pretty easy, but soon you'll find obstacles that halt block lines and other dangers. Once you begin encountering these, the difficulty of the game picks up, but it's still tranquil enough to help you relax. Each stage also consists of several parts, so you have to solve each puzzle to clear the level.

In addition to the different game modes, ERMO has objectives to complete as well. These can range from "collect 100 blocks" to "reach level 10 in Itinerary." They add variety to the game and give players something to strive for while playing. There are also Game Center leaderboards and achievements.

Shift the board to make like colored lines in this puzzle game.

The Good

ERMO is a zen-like puzzle experience that is also challenging. The game's beautiful design is minimalistic yet charming at the same time, and the sounds are done well. There's a lot of variety with the game modes and puzzles, and it's hard to put down once you start to figure it out. The missions are a nice addition, as it helps keep the game interesting over time.

The Bad

For what it's worth, ERMO has a lot going for it, but it's not perfect. I'm not a fan of the fact that the game disables your background audio for it's own in-game music and sounds, so hopefully this can be fixed in a future update. Otherwise, it's a great puzzle game for everyone.

The verdict

As a big puzzle game fan, I love ERMO. The ambience that the themes create is incredibly peaceful, alluring, and soothing to listen to. The gameplay itself is simple but tricky as you get further along, so it's welcome for anyone looking for a challenge. I like the fact that there are so many game modes, as it keeps the entire game fresh and interesting, especially the procedurally generated ones. The goals on top of that just give you more reason to keep coming back, which is always nice. I just wish that the game did not take over my device's audio, because that's a bit obnoxious for those who prefer listening to their own tunes.

I recommend giving ERMO a try if you enjoy puzzle games that make you think. You can find ERMO on the App Store as a universal download for your iPhone and iPad for just $1.99.

8.9

OVERALL

Replayability 9

Game Controls 9

Graphics 9

Gameplay 9

Sound/Music 8.5

$1.99

ERMO

Giuseppe La Torre

Source link: http://appadvice.com/reviews

When you're keeping track of a busy life and household, you need help with the shopping. Those trips to the supermarket, department store, and electronics outlet can get expensive if you don't make shopping lists. With Out of Milk, you can kiss most of that worry good bye.

Free

Remember The Milk

Remember The Milk Pty Ltd

Free

AnyList

Purple Cover, Inc.

Free

Todoist: Organize your life

Ist Productivity Ltd.

When you use Out of Milk, you're working with an app that's designed with shoppers in mind. It's simple, fast, and easy to use, allowing you to enter new items with just a few taps and some typing.

Out of Milk supports three types of lists: shopping, pantry, and to-do. Within the shopping list, you're able to jot down things you need to buy, categorizing them and marking how many you need. The pantry helps you keep track of those commonly-used food items (or whatever) that you have on hand. In the To-Do list, you can keep track of those tasks you need to complete and when they're due.

The real power of the app for shopping comes after you've entered something into your list. If you tap on that item, you'll be able to set things like how many of it you want to buy and the price. You can even put in coupons you might have for that item, and whether it's going to be taxed.

You can also categorize your items, specifying things like where you might find them or what they're for. Out of Milk is able to handle as many lists as you want to create, so you can use it for your weekly trip to the grocery store as well as your Christmas shopping, all without any mixups or confusion.

In the pantry view, you can create a list for yourself of what you have in your pantry, and how much. You're able to enter how many eggs you have, for example, or whether your butter dish is full or low.

A shopping budget and list in one app

The Good

One of the nicest things about Out of Milk is its focus on making generating your shopping list quick and easy. Rather than typing everything in that you need to shop for, this app supports scanning UPC barcodes.

That means all you have to do is go through your kitchen, scanning the barcodes for things you want to buy. Of course, if you don't have a barcode handy (or if it isn't recognized), you can still enter your items in by hand.

Out of Milk even maintains a history of things you've had on your shopping lists in the past. So, you can always just search for your things there. There are multiple ways you can add items to your shopping list, and all of them are easy to do.

With Out of Milk, you can also create multiple lists, or a suite of categories to organize your lists. In fact, if you're typing in something that another Out of Milk user has categorized in the past, it will automatically be put in that category. The app is easy to use, intuitive, but it has a simplicity that belies how robust it truly is.

At the store, either virtually or in person, you can start ticking items off your list. Out of Milk even keeps track of how much you're spending. After you add things to your list, tapping on them allows you to tell the app how much each items costs, how much you need to buy, and even whether sales tax applies to that item.

Once that's done, you'll see a "List Total" at the bottom of the screen. It tells you what the total cost should be for all of the items on that list, along with how many things you're looking to buy.

As you tick the things off your list, Out of Milk moves them from your active list to a completed section (called the cart on the Out of Milk website). When you start checking off items, you'll see another section of the bottom of the app's screen start to update — the Cart Total and the Items in Cart.

This section helps you keep track of how much you're spending in the store or in that online purchase. You won't have any sticker shock when you get to the checkout counter or page, because you'll already know the total.

The Bad

The only negative I can find in Out of Milk lies in the Pantry tab. This tab is meant to help you keep track of what you have on hand at any given time.

You can add things to your Pantry, filling in information like the price, how much you have, and the category. Popularly-added items will show up in the bar as you type, so you can often bypass filling in the whole name of the item. Most of these predefined items will also be categorized, making your pantry list quite neat and organized.

So, what's the problem, you ask? Well, while you can quite easily find things and add them to your pantry, keeping tabs on what you might be low on, the way you quickly put those items into a shopping list is counter-intuitive.

To add items to a shopping list, you check them off. That runs contrary to just about everything most people understand about shopping lists, since checking something off usually means you're done with it.

You have to really think about what the Pantry list means. This is a list of things you do have. If you are out of it, you mark it as gone — then you'll have the option to add that item to a shopping list. It requires a bit more thought (or, in my case, experimentation) than is usual, and there's no introductory tutorial when you open the app for the first time to help you understand that.

The verdict

Once you get the hang of using Out of Milk, it's one of the better to-do and shopping list apps available. It has plenty of features, keeps track of prices for you, and allows you to enter items by scanning their barcodes. That makes it one of the easiest shopping list apps to use, and being able to create a pantry list of commonly-used things in your kitchen, then transfer those to a shopping list, shows that the developers of Out of Milk really want to up the ante for their competitors.

8.9

OVERALL

Lasting appeal 10

iPhone Integration 10

Does it well 10

Is engaging 8

User Interface 6.5

FREE

Out of Milk – Shopping List

Bonial International GmbH

Source link: http://appadvice.com/reviews