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Shards of Memories: an Art Puzzle Adventure ($1.99) by Milos Micakovic is a puzzle game that tells the story of a troubled professor as he goes through one of his most difficult stages of life. If you like philosophical games that have a deep meaning behind them, such as Stay, Mum and Sally’s Law, then you’ll enjoy what Shards of Memories has to offer.

While I love all kinds of games on all platforms, I think the best genre to play on mobile is definitely the puzzle game. These are the ones that make you think and keep your brain stimulated, but are also challenging and sometimes they can tell you a heartfelt story and appeal to your emotions. Plus, they’re the type of game that you can enjoy in short play sessions throughout the day, rather than having to sit down and spend several hours at once to feel like you’ve made any progress. I feel like I’ve gone through almost all of the puzzle games that matter on the App Store, but I can’t help but check out a new release when it hits. I saw Shards of Memories show up on the App Store just this week, and knew that this was a game I had to check out for myself.

Visually speaking, Shards of Memories is a fairly photorealistic game that looks downright gorgeous. The game features a dark and rich wooden texture background that represents a table, and the classic Polaroid-style photographs that represent each stage have a realistic aesthetic. The puzzles themselves also sport pieces of glass that have a frosted texture to them, and everything is complete with cracks once you put them together to fit the object that is the focus of the level you’re on. There are subtle animations in Shards of Memories that you’ll notice when the broken glass is put in its proper place, and the transitions from one puzzle to the next are smooth and seamless. This is important, because each photo tells part of the story behind of the professor, so the conversion from one to the other means everything flows together. Story text is presented in a simple but effective serif typeface that goes well with the overall serious tone of the game. The slow, ambient soundtrack feels rather emotional and the sound effects represents shattered glass well. The developer truly did a great job with Shards of Memories in terms of the graphics and audio, so kudos.

Following traditional puzzle game fashion, Shards of Memories has three chapters and there are about 91 levels total in the entire game, so do get a good amount of game for the price. The goal in each puzzle is rather simple: rearrange all of the broken pieces of glass so that they fit the object that symbolizes that part of the professor’s life at the time shown in the photograph. Each photo will have a line or two of story, and the bigger picture reveals itself over time. However, to make things interesting, Shards of Memories has multiple endings that can unfold, depending on how the player decides to go about playing the game. I’m still pretty early on in the game so I’m not sure how the endings are determined, but this is a great way to keep players coming back even if they beat the game once but still feel emotionally invested in the game.

Controls in Shards of Memories is a simple affair. Each puzzle features a cutout of an object, and several broken pieces of glass. Your job is to get those shards into their proper place in the cutout, and this is done by dragging them where you think they go. If it’s the right spot, it will snap into place. Sometimes pieces will have to be rotated before they can fit in the image properly, and this is done by tapping on it to make it rotate clockwise. Once you think it’s properly upright, drag it onto the board with your finger and see if you can find the spot for it. If you’ve ever played tangram puzzles before, you’ll understand that Shards of Memories is similar to that, and there may be a lot of trial-and-error involved before you figure it out, especially since things get more complicated as you go on.

Besides being a beautiful puzzle game, Shards of Memories is a deep, thought-provoking experience. As you unravel the story behind the professor, you’ll discover that he is fighting anxiety and depression as he is trying to get over a meaningful relationship with someone else. Since we are all adults, I think this is something that we’ve all been through at some point in our lives, and I’m glad to see that it’s being expressed through a game. As players watch the professor learn to deal with the emotional events he’s experiencing, it can also help out people who are going through something similar. Even if it doesn’t, it’s still offers a unique perspective of psychological insights and visual thinking.

As I mentioned earlier, I’m still early on in the game, but so far I’m loving every moment of it. The visuals in Shards of Memories are exquisite, superb, and incredibly realistic, which is fitting considering the nature of the game. The background piano music is soothing to listen to, despite casting a dark tone overall to the game. Sound effects are a nice touch, and the puzzles start off easy enough but do pick up in difficulty as you go, so it’s never too easy. And the multiple endings that you can get give you a good reason to go back and replay the puzzles as you try to get an alternative ending to what you go before. Plus, there are no time limitations or move restrictions, so you play and go through the emotional story at your own pace. Overall, Shards of Memories is a great visual storytelling experience in a puzzle game.

I highly recommend giving Shards of Memories a try if you are looking for a meaningful mobile puzzle game with a fairly relatable, emotional story to go with everything. Shards of Memories is available on the App Store as a universal download for your iPhone and iPad for just $1.99. There are no in-app purchases, so you just pay once and play forever.

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Pennies – Personal Money, Budget & Finance Manager ($1.99) by Magnetic Zero is a simplistic app that wants to help you keep track of where your money goes. If you liked apps like Next and Clara, then Pennies should be right up your alley.

Oh, budgeting — it’s a tedious thing to do, but it’s something we all need to do because not all of us are rich. While it’s nice to have a lot of disposable income, sometimes we just have to plan out how we spend our money so that it can last us a long time. I haven’t been that good with budgeting myself, but I’ve been trying to do better with Mint, my personal finance app of choice at the moment. But of course, I’m always searching for new apps to try out, so when I stumbled upon Pennies on the App Store this week, I had to give it a shot.

Pennies has a minimal design, but it still looks elegant and beautiful. The app makes use of light, pastel colors (green, red, blue) to indicate how you are doing with your budgets for the indicated time period, so you can get an idea with just a single glance. The sans-serif typography that is used is also incredibly legible and easy to look at, regardless of the small or large size. It’s also fast and responsive, so navigating around the app is a breeze.

On the first launch of Pennies, it will ask you to set up your budget. There are three options for this: monthly, weekly, or one-off budget. If you are not familiar with a one-off budget, it will never repeat and is for a set time period. The next step will be to select the start date, which can be today, a certain day of the week, the first or last of the month, or a specific day of the month (this all depends on your type of budget). Then you pick the currency, budget amount, money left, give it a name, and ta-da, your new budget is set up.

If you created multiple budgets, you can scroll through them one-by-one by swiping horizontally on the main screen. Swiping vertically reveals the total remaining amount for the budget and how much left for today. To add a new expense on a budget, tap on the “+” button. This brings up a keypad input, and bar graphs at the top make sure you are aware of how much you have left, so you will never be left wondering. Once you have the value entered, just tap on the checkmark and it’s saved — if you change your mind, just tap on the “x.”

Going back to the main screen, a tap on the “hamburger” button will bring up a list of expenses for the selected budget in chronological order. You can swipe on items here to delete them, but unfortunately, you can’t edit them. Hopefully the developer can change that in the future.

Tapping on the budget button in the top right corner of the screen will bring up your budgets, and you can add new ones as needed, make changes to existing ones, or delete them. You can access the app’s settings by double-tapping anywhere on the screens — a little weird, but it works. Pennies has toggles for sounds and reminders, in case you need some nudging to keep you on track.

Pennies is a simple budget tracker, and is great for anyone who needs a little push when it comes to managing their money. I love the plainness of the app since it’s intuitive enough for anyone to use it from the get-go. However, it could still use some improvements to make it even better. A big one that’s missing is sync — I would need a way to get my data out of the app if necessary, so it would be nice to have either iCloud or Dropbox for that. It also should let users be able to edit their expenses in case a small typo was made, rather than requiring you to delete and add it again.

The developer has also promised some bonuses in future updates, including synced budgets with friends, family, and partners, as well as a spending wizard in case you need help figuring out how much you should be setting aside for everything. And to make it more fun to use, sound packs and rewards are on their way.

At the moment, I’m not into manually keeping track of my money — that’s why I use Mint — but if you are able to discipline yourself to do it regularly, then Pennies is a good option on the market.

I recommend checking out Pennies for yourself if you need a manual budget tracker to help you manage your money. You can find it on the App Store on the iPhone for $1.99.

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