Daily Mac App Store Digest – 03/17/11

Phantasmat marks the evolution of the adventure-horror genre in casual games. Combining compelling plot with hidden-object & match-3 mechanics, this game follows up with beautifully hand drawn art and AAA production values. The game immerses the player in the dark story of a sunken city and mysterious hotel still inhabited by its former citizens. The suspense is heightened by an impressive soundtrack by Rob Westwood. "Our goal was to go above and beyond of what most casual adventure games on the market represent. We wanted a game that is simple and fun to play for everyone, but which still offers the players an engrossing mystery and beautifully realized world to explore" – said Lead Designer Tom Grochowiak.

While Phantasmat operates in the realm of modern casual adventure using hidden object and match-3 mechanic, it also features a deep story and setting more akin to the classic adventure games of the past. Each of the complex characters the player meets is professionally voiced, including an appearance by Michael McConnohie of Diablo 2, World of Warcraft and Mass Effect fame. As Codeminion co-owner Konrad Olesiewicz said: "Our aim was to create an immersive adventure game with some horror elements, featuring superb graphics and music as well an engaging storyline. We wanted a casual game that can still be appreciated by the hardcore adventure fans. I believe we succeeded in this with Phantasmat, which might be one of our best games to date."

$19.99/Download

Finger Alarm was designed to be so simple that no explanation is needed for the process of setting up an alarm. Simply click on one of the two flanking clocks move the clock hands around, stop where you want your alarm to go off. Let go and the alarm is set. The cockpit style design allows for a quick overview of the three clocks. The background skins can be changed to create an atmosphere that fits your style. The complexity of Finger Alarm is hidden behind the simple clock design. The iLifeTouch team has really focused on making the alarm setting experience just take a matter of seconds.

Feature Highlights:
* Sun or moon display will appear on the centre clock in real time
* Cockpit type display
* Two totally separate Alarm clocks
* Each of the two Alarm Clocks has multiple coloured Alarms
* Pre set your daily Wake Up Alarm
* Multiple Skins to satisfy varied tastes
* Snooze and shut off buttons are front and centre
* iLifeTouch guarantee for quaility

$1.99/Download

Coladia has announced Secret of the Lost Cavern is available on the Mac App Store. Secret of the Lost Cavern is a Point and Click adventure game, that plunges the player into an inspiring adventure that takes place during the Paleolithic period in prehistoric time, 15,000 years B.C. Delve into a world of exploration and intrigue as you embark on a Stone Age quest filled with puzzles and mystery. Use your wits and powers of observation to survive the vast wilderness as your journey leads you to one of mankind’s forgotten wonders.

Experience your adventure through the eyes of Arok and meet many fascinating characters. Contend with the wild world where fishing, hunting, gathering, and mysterious shaman ceremonies are all part of the struggle for survival as you follow the path of your mentor and work with him to recreate the paintings of the renowned Lascaux Cave.

$9.99/Download

The DaisyDisk Team has announced the release and final version of DaisyDisk 2.0, a major update to their award-winning hard disk visualization utility for Mac OS X. The version 2.0 features drag-and-drop file deletion, ability to scan several disks/folders at a time, brand new user interface based on Core Animation, FileVault support, and many other enhancements. The application is now available also in the Mac App Store.

"Deleting files from the application was an obvious need, and we have built a handy and safe user experience for this task" stated Co-Founder Oleg Krupnov. "We have also completely redesigned the rest of UI, which allowed more efficient ways of working with DaisyDisk, such as scanning many sources at a time, switching between scanned reports, and other things. The use of Core Animation has made the entire application feel faster and more powerful."

DaisyDisk represents disk content as an interactive color-coded sunburst map, quickly revealing large files which may no longer be needed. The map can be easily navigated to preview deeper levels of data. Unlike the rectangular "tree map" disk visualization technique used in other products, DaisyDisk’s sunburst map displays information in a more elegant and natural way that suits both power users and people not very familiar with the Mac OS X file system.

$19.99/Download

JixiPix has announced PhotoArtista – Oil 1.0, its award winning photo to oil painting application, now available on the Mac at the Mac App Store. PhotoArtista – Oil is the premier app for converting photographs into fabulous works of oil painted art. Photo to artist in seconds! PhotoArtista – Oil transforms a treasured photograph into a beautiful work of art quickly and easily.

PhotoArtista is an automatic painting tool that takes no time to master in order to create an original work of art. PhotoArtista’s super efficient design and interface creates a work-flow that requires only a few easy steps: Start with a photo, choose a paint style, and then apply… let the application do the work. PhotoArtista includes 6 gorgeous art styles that range from realistic to expressionistic. These include:

* Portrait
* Landscape
* Realism
* Impressionism
* Expressionism
* Tone Painting

$7.99/Download

Codeminion, leading developer and publisher of award-winning casual games such as Ancient Quest of Saqqarah, StoneLoops! of Jurassica, Magic Match and Phantasmat, has announced the release of Brunhilda and the Dark Crystal, their successful adventure game on the recently open Mac App Store for the price of $9.99.

The game takes Brunhilda, a young linguistics student from New York, on an unexpected wild journey to the varied lands of the Magical Realm – a place she thought was just an innocent, weird fantasy of her eccentric aunt. The story focuses on an ancient prophecy and makes Brunhilda personally responsible for solving the great mystery of fading magic and, as it turns out, also saving the world. Together with her bag-entrapped sarcastic demon companion, Brunhilda will learn how to construct a flying broom, dare to disturb sleeping dragons, deal with air pirates and learn the arcane crafts of Wizardry, Alchemy and Telepathy minigames. The story is packed with many twists and turns, humorous dialogues and the gameplay is a mixture of hidden object mechanic, puzzles and point and click quest solving.

$9.99/Download

Faber Acoustical has announced the release of SignalScope Pro 3.0. The latest release of Faber Acoustical’s most popular acoustical test and measurement toolset for Mac is now available for purchase in the Mac App Store. Version 3 of SignalScope Pro features an enhanced user interface, better control over audio device configurations, and more comprehensive user preferences.

SignalScope Pro offers a suite of tools on the Mac for dynamic and real-time signal analysis, data acquisition, and automated testing. SignalScope Pro was designed for researchers, educators, consultants, and advanced hobbyists. Despite its power and flexibility, SignalScope Pro provides an intuitive user interface that enables even complex measurements to be configured within a few minutes. Those measurement configurations can then be saved and reloaded when the need arises.

New functionality in SignalScope Pro includes the option to perform arithmetic operations, such as addition, subtraction, and multiplication, on two arbitrary input channels of an audio input device. Users can also specify arbitrary FFT lengths and view live spectrogram data in 3D with a logarithmic frequency scale. Two of each type of analysis tool can be opened and operated simultaneously.

$199/Download

Noteboom Productions has announced that their latest Video Tutorial, Tutor for Pages for iPad, is now available on the Mac App store. In Tutor for Pages for iPad the user watches videos on their Macintosh to learn how to use Pages on the iPad. They can choose different video chapters to watch as they go through the video tutorial.

The videos cover everything from the document setup to header and footers to masking images to adding tables and charts. All the videos are included in the app so the user can follow along on their iPad. No internet connection is needed once the app is downloaded.

$4.99/Download

Eternal Storms Software, makers of flickery and GimmeSomeTune, today is pleased to announce the release of ScreenFloat 1.0, their brand new Mac application. ScreenFloat simplifies the users’ workflow by letting them create screenshots that float above all other windows, eliminating the need to resize or move windows around just to keep a piece of information visible on the display.

ScreenFloat provides the user with customizable keyboard shortcuts to quickly create floating shots. For organizing and categorizing created shots, ScreenFloat comes with a Shots Browser. In the Shots Browser, closed shots are collected, tagged, titled, and organized in collections or smart collections. Collections are basically folders which users manually add created shots to. Smart Collections contain shots based on criteria the user specifies.

To make creation of floating shots for text easier, ScreenFloat implements a system service that works with all Cocoa applications’ selected text. For the user’s convenience, there is a screencast available on the website.

$7.99/Download

Independent software developer Christian Kienle today is pleased to announce the release and availability of Store News 1.1 in the Mac App Store. Store News for Mac OS X is the quickest way of finding out the best deals in the Mac App Store. An app that cost real money yesterday could be totally free today. In order to find the best deals for you we look at every app listed in the Mac App Store every day. As soon its price drops it will become visible in Store News. So check Store News daily in order to get the most out of it. Users may easily share what they have found via Twitter. Enjoy. What’s new in Store News 1.1?

* Best deals are updated every 30 minutes instead of every 24 hours
* Store News fetches the latest deals every 15 minutes in the background automatically
* You can now sort by price, discount, application name and category

Free/Download

To help celebrate the release of Print Window on the Mac App Store, Searchware Solutions is currently offering special, limited-time pricing of $10, a 50% savings off the normal price. This pricing is available on the Mac App Store and is also available on full, single-user licenses available from the Searchware Solutions website.

"I am thoroughly excited to see Print Window available to users from the Mac App Store," said Scott Crick, founder of Searchware Solutions. "Apple has created an exciting marketplace with the Mac App Store and I am very glad to have the opportunity to be a part of that."

Print Window is the premier Mac OS X utility for generating printed file listings from the Mac OS X Finder. With Print Window, users can generate and print file/directory listings of the currently selected window or folder with complete control over the way file listings work, what folders are listed and the final printed format.

$9.99/Download

Nevosoft has announced the release of Paradise Beach 2: Around the World for Mac on the Mac App Store. Once again the goal is to create the perfect beach resort for others, making everybody satisfied and happy. A lot of improvements over its predecessor make the sequel an exciting entertaining experience. The title is available in nine languages, including English, German, Spanish, French, Japanese and Russian.

Players will help manage family businesses on eight different islands. After finishing the story mode, which can easy take up to seven hours, one can also enjoy the sandbox mode, or try to replay levels for a better rating, and to obtain all of the awards. Each of the eight islands varies in landscape, each with their own individual restrictions and bonus objects that you can unlock by completing it.

Visitors who vary in appearance and demands are one of the greatest features of Paradise Beach 2. Not only they make the gameplay more involving, but they also increase the vast number of strategies that can be applied to any level. Wonderful graphics and animations make it entertaining to even simply watch your growing resort.

$6.99/Download

An app for iPhone and Mac called Dropkick has shaken up the crowded task list app market by under-doing its competitors. While most task management apps can feel like a maze of features, Dropkick aims for simplicity by focusing on the essentials: add tasks, drag-and-drop to prioritize, and check things off. It’s so easy to use, you get the feeling it might actually help you get things done.

Dropkick works great on either iPhone or Mac as a standalone, but it really shines when synced together. Tasks are securely synced over the internet as you make changes so you can easily manage tasks at your desk and pick up where you left off on-the-go.

A new update adds a few handy improvements like the option to create multiple lists (e.g. to separate personal and work tasks), back-to-back task creation in the iPhone version (e.g. to quickly create a grocery list), and more efficient keyboard navigation on the Mac version.

$4.99/Download

Spheroids vs. Lady Jane respects the aesthetics of arcade games from the golden era of the early 80’s. The goal is simply to destroy all of the splitting Spheroids to advance to the next level. Rotate left, right, fire and thrust are the only controls – however mastering the inertia of the player’s ship takes skill. Explosions fill the screen as the game keeps a silky-smooth refresh rate. Multiple advanced weapons are available as power-ups; the most powerful enables gamers to unleash a wave of screen-filling destruction.

The game garnered an inordinate amount of feedback from a highly-polarised user-base: hard-core gamers praised the game for its frantic nature, while casual gamers frequently complained. "Spheroids vs. Lady Jane is hard, I don’t apologise for that…"says Richard Pearson, who coded the original version of the game in a weekend, "In the beginning I just wanted to see how many dots I could move smoothly on the screen, it kind of grew from there. It was a sad day when I couldn’t afford to keep the server running. Now that Apple hosts the Mac App Store I can share it again without the cost. Apple is doing a great thing for independent developers."

$0.99/Download

Assassin’s Creed II is the sequel to the renowned historical fantasy 3’rd person action/adventure video game Assassin’s Creed.
The game is set in the 21st century, with player-controlled protagonist Desmond Miles escaping from Abstergo Industries with an employee, Lucy Stillman, after being forced to relive the genetic memories of ancestral assassin Altaïr ibn La-Ahad through a machine known as the "Animus". After escaping from Abstergo, Desmond enters a device which is more advanced than the original Animus, the Animus 2.0, and relives the genetic memories of ancestral nobleman Ezio Auditore da Firenze, who lived during the Renaissance period of the late 15th century in Italy. The player controls Ezio, who becomes an Assassin after his father and brothers are murdered by a traitor to the Auditore family. While controlling Ezio, the player can explore game renditions of Italian cities, regions and landmarks in open world gameplay.

The player may now swim in water, and eagle vision —the ability to identify specific people and landmarks— can now be used in third-person view and while moving. A young Leonardo da Vinci is present in the game, aiding the player by creating new weapons from translated "codex pages" that Altaïr, the original game’s main character, left behind for future assassins’ analysis and insight. Within the game, the player will be able to use Leonardo’s flying machine (based on real-life plans by Leonardo) while on one mission. The player also has the ability to control a carriage on one level, but can row gondolas, as well as ride horses at any point in the game where they are readily available between towns and cities.

$37.99/Download

Flux is an advanced HTML5 Web design application, capable of creating stunning sites from scratch. Flux isn’t a template based solution, it’s a creative design environment.

Flux can edit existing sites, or create brand new ones using HTML and CSS. You can even drag and drop in pre-designed objects like photo galleries and navigations menus.

$119/Download

Easy-to-use point of sales, inventory, and sales management software for small businesses. It features a full featured search engine and a shopping cart for processing sales. It is built to work with a keyboard interface barcode reader.

Features:
• Fast full-featured item search.
• Manages sales and inventory.
• View monthly, weekly, or daily sales and revenue.
• Built-in register to checkout items!
• Undo any purchase or sets of purchases!
• Works with a keyboard interface barcode reader!
• Personalize your own receipts or invoices!
• Set the tax rate or fees for any category.
• Set the transaction fee for each payment types.

$29.99/Download