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Foresee: Your Personal Activity Forecast ($0.99) by BorderLeap, LLC is a weather app that helps you plan out your day and activities. Foresee is definitely an app that will help you make the most of your day given the present weather conditions of your frequently visited areas, and a great app for making life a bit easier. It’s the first app from the game developer BorderLeap, who has made some great hits like har•mon•y, Alpha Omega, and Drop Flip.

Like everyone else, I live a fairly busy life that is full of work, personal things, errands, appointments, meetings, and any other thing that gets thrown my way. It can be hard to plan things, but everything gets thrown into my calendar so that I can make sure I remember something coming up. However, aside from the normal things every day, I don’t necessarily schedule new activities ahead of time based on the weather, because to me, it seemed like a hassle — I’d have to use two different apps and always constantly check how the weather is as the day approached. Fortunately, that problem is now solved with Foresee.

In terms of visual design, Foresee is gorgeous. The app will launch with a gorgeous background photo (you can change this for each location) that is transparent enough for text to be shown clearly on the foreground. You’ll clearly see the present temperature and weather conditions at the top in large text, with a full two-week timeline underneath, with a projected forecast for the next seven days. Navigation is quick and easy with the recognizable buttons, and there is a lot of flexibility with the criteria you want to put in for activity planning. Plus, with the wide variety of different background images that you can use, there is a lot of customization in Foresee.

The first thing that you’ll want to do in Foresee is to grant it permission to your present location. This makes it easy for you to plan activities in your home or work area. The app also lets you add multiple locations, though you’ll have to tap on the hamburger menu button in the top left corner to access the menu. Along with adding several cities from this menu screen, you can change the temperature and wind speed units. There is also an introductory tutorial in case you need some guidance on how to use the app, though I believe it’s pretty self explanatory.

When you are ready to start planning an activity for the weather, just select the location you want to plan it for, and then tap on the plus button under the present weather bar. This is where the magic of Foresee happens.

The first thing you’ll want to do is give your activity or event a title, and then choose the appropriate icon for it: running, walking, cycling, mow the grass, walk the dog, etc. There’s a lot of options to choose from, and you can just swipe horizontally to scroll through the icon ribbon. Then, you will set your time and date preferences, including how often this activity will occur and at what time range. You can set it to notify you when your conditions are met as well. After the date and time are set, you can tweak your optimal weather preferences for the activity. These include specific temperature ranges, chance of precipitation, cloudiness levels, wind, and humidity levels.

Since I live in Southern California, the weather has not been optimal for me to be outside during peak afternoon hours most of the time. My skin also has a sensitivity to heat, so I’m finding Foresee to be incredibly useful, even though I’m seeing that my optimal weather conditions may not happen around this time of year (oh woe is me). However, it’s amazing that I can tell the app what I consider to be perfect conditions for a certain activity and it will let me know when that day arrives so I can do what I want to do.

You can add separate activities for each location, as well as multiple events in one area. The app tells you from the main location view whether or not the day’s weather meets your criteria. Even if it does or doesn’t, you can tap on the activity and see the conditions for the time range that you specified.

To change the background image for your cities, just tap on the photo icon in the upper right corner. It brings up a ribbon of thumbnails that you can scroll through horizontally, and when you find an image you like, just tap on it to select it. The location detail screen will refresh with your choice, and it’s pretty fast to render as well, so you can constantly change the theme on-the-fly.

I only downloaded Foresee over the weekend, but I can see this being an invaluable tool to plan my outdoor activities, especially in the SoCal heat. The app itself looks gorgeous and is intuitive for anyone to use, and the ability to customize your optimal forecast for specific activities and events is fantastic. I think the only improvement that should be made to the app is the ability for users to add in their own photos as background images, giving it even more of a personal touch.

I recommend giving Foresee a try if you want a weather app that works with you to schedule your activities in ideal weather conditions. Foresee is available on the iPhone App Store for just $0.99.

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Crooked Path ($1.99) by Ruvix is a puzzle runner that serves as an analogy for life itself. If you are looking for a true challenge and like to test out your reflexive skills, then Crooked Path is a game to check out. Be warned though — this one is clearly not for the faint of heart (or the easily frustrated).

If there is anything that mobile games have taught us from the past few years, it is that puzzles and runners are pretty popular. I mean, who doesn’t like to sit down with a relaxing puzzle or just kill some time seeing how far they can go? But what if you combine the two into a single game, and turn the difficulty level to 11? Well, that’s pretty much Crooked Path in a nutshell. It’s also has a rather transformative message about life, though it may get lost in the difficulty of the game.

Visually, Crooked Path is beautiful with a simple and clean aesthetic. In fact, it reminds me a bit of Monument Valley due to the pseudo optical illusions. The colors in Crooked Path are gorgeous, as the game features a nice range of soft pastels to bright and vibrant hues, as well as some fun light particle effects. Animations in the game are smooth and fluid with no lag on my iPhone 6s Plus, which is important because you have to be quick on your feet in this game. There is also an ambient, atmospheric soundtrack that is rather immersive, so I recommend using your best headphones. And while the gameplay itself can be a bit frustrating, the soundtrack can help you focus on the game itself and get you to solve the puzzles…as long as you don’t throw your phone.

Crooked Path is a level-based game, so you will have to solve each stage before you can gain access to the next chapter. The objective of the game is simple: guide your runner to the light, glowing portal at the end of a labyrinth. However, this is much harder than it looks, and since the controls just require one touch, you have to figure out the turn patterns and where you need to go while collecting the white orbs. It’s a puzzle that you must solve in order to reach the end and advance to the next level. And if you think that the game starts off easy enough, I’m sorry to disappoint you, but it’s insanely difficult right from the get-go. As I mentioned at the very start — this is not for those who give up easily.

The controls in Crooked Path are easy enough: just tap on the screen at the right moment to turn left or right, since your guy runs automatically. However, the trick is that your runner can only turn one way when you reach certain forks in the road. I was confused by this at first, but then I realized that this is part of the puzzle aspect — observe and memorize the turns that you take at those forks, and remember them for the next attempt, because you’ll be failing a lot. Once you get the pattern down and time your turns for the correct moment, you should be able to reach the end goal, though it will take you numerous attempts for each stage. And new mechanics are introduced as you go, like buttons that extend certain paths, so it only gets more interesting as you go, if you can make it, anyway. Fortunately, you aren’t penalized for falling and failing, and there is no time limit, so you can go at your own pace.

So how does Crooked Path relate to life itself? It’s pretty straightforward: the path to your destiny is not going to be a straight one. As cheesy as the line sounds, it’s true. The game presents you with many different routes that you could take, but you have to use your head and reflexes to find the right one. And like life, the game is not easy. Life is all about experience and learning from your mistakes, and that is just what you can expect from this game. I can only imagine what the rest of the game will be like after spending about 30 minutes trying to complete the first stage.

After my testing of the game for this review, I have some thoughts. First, I love the visual style of the game, because it’s nice and clean, so it doesn’t look too busy and distracting when you have to focus. The music is soothing, immersive, and helps you focus. I enjoy puzzles and runners, so the mix of both of these genres is interesting and refreshing from the typical App Store fare these days.

However, I think the difficulty level of the game is set way too high right now, because it feels almost impossible right from the get-go. I was persistent enough to complete the first stage, but I can see many others (especially casual gamers) giving up rather quickly. I know that the game is to serve as a metaphor for life, but I don’t think it’s fair to start it off so hard. The game moves super quickly, giving you just a split second to react to turns, and it’s rather frustrating after a while. Honestly I think the game would be better if it started off a tad slower, or at least give you a way to practice before going in to the real stage. Either way, I just think the game is brutally difficult right now and rather unforgiving, so it could definitely use some tweaks in game balance.

If you’re a casual gamer who just wants something fun and relaxing, then I do not recommend Crooked Path. But if you are a hardcore gamer who wants a real test and is up for the challenge, then by all means, grab Crooked Path. Just don’t say I didn’t warn you.

Crooked Path is available on the App Store as a universal download for your iPhone, iPad, and Apple TV for just $1.99. There are no in-app purchases.

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