Apps The most visceral lawnmowing simulator yet

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This month’s mobile must-downloads

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IN THE SPOTLIGHT

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1 Speed Dating for Ghosts R50 / iOS If dating ever makes you wish you were dead, imagine how people who are actually dead feel. In this game, you get the chance to find out by chatting with ghouls.

4 Summer Catchers R50 / Android ● R60 / iOS This endless runner dispenses with tap-to-leap larks. Instead, you kit out a ramshackle cart and trigger power-ups at optimum moments, aiming to reach sunnier climes – and avoid death by monster.

7 iOrnament Pro R110 / iPad Remember the Spirograph? This app is a digital take, but with layers, sparkly bits, and the means to wrap your creation around a globe like a bonkers handcrafted Day-Glo planet. Look at all the shiny! 2 Socratic Free / Android, iOS Want help with something the kids are studying? Socratic points you towards examples that can teach them about relevant concepts. No more copying Wikipedia and getting found out!

5 Our Galaxy R50 / iOS We’re not sure if holding the galaxy in your mitts makes you feel like a god or an ant. Either way, this app gives you an interactive 3D view for understanding the vastness of our galactic neighbourhood.

8 It’s Literally Just Mowing Free / Android, iOS Actually, this one’s not literally just mowing – there’s a load of IAP too. A pity, since the zone-out mowing is nice. This is considerably less sweaty than mowing your actual lawn. 3 Powercut, Inc. R46 / Android Power consumption in offices is a problem. This game’s solution is a tad extreme, as you manually toggle power to each room. Staff can’t work or even go for a coffee without you flicking a switch.

6 Orc Heist Free / Android, iOS If you ask us, lowering a beloved pet on a rope to nab treasure that an orc has carefully balanced on its lip is just asking for trouble. Your thumb becomes the difference between riches and carnage.

9 Muviz Edge Free (IAPs) / Android Music visualisers might seem old hat, but Muviz dispenses with bouncing level meters or glowing 1990s abstract nonsense – it’s a stylish slash of animated colour at the edges of your display.

TOT POCKET

R300 / iOS A tonic to the countless doc editors and note-taking apps, Tot Pocket is an elegant way to gather copied text and links in one place. It has a simple single-window design and uses a colour-coded dot system to keep your notes organised. Helpfully, it also syncs seamlessly across iOS and macOS… but why is it free on Mac and R300 on iPhones and iPads? Greedy developers? In truth, no. App stores have trained users to expect endless updates for nothing, but it’s just not realistic. Sustainable pricing is the only option if we want nice things to stick around… and that includes Tot Pocket.

Lenswear SHIFTCAM

Anyone armed with an iPhone 11 Pro now has a phone with three cameras… but for some smartphone photographers, that’s not nearly enough. The ShiftCam is a phone case touting a bunch of additional lenses on its sliding rear section. These enable you to get up close and personal with 10x and 20x macros, zoom in with the 4x telephoto, cut out glare and increase ultra-wide contrast with the polariser, and just make snaps look flat-out weird with the fisheye. Narcissist? There’s a selfie lens adapter for use with ShiftCam’s high-end ProLens series. Lip wobbling because you don’t have an 11 Pro? Check out the range anyway, because a whole host of iPhones get the treatment. Rtba / pclinkshop.com

Space time continue ’em G-SHOCK NASA

Another month, another G-Shock. Not really a ‘shock’, then, but we can’t criticise Casio’s conveyor belt of cool retro releases, and its latest collaboration is out of this world – by which we mean it’s a NASA special edition. The all-white DW5600NASA20-7CR features the famous worm-like logo on the front, as well as ‘National Aeronautics and Space Administration’ and an American flag on the band; then flip it over and you’ll find an engraving of the Moon on the stainless steel case plate. For its after-dark party piece, the digital watch face is also backlit with an image of the Moon. Even the packaging is special, with a tin to remind you of the Saturn V rocket that powered the Apollo missions. R2 200 / gshock.com

DROP EVERYTHING & DOWNLOAD Sky: Children of the Light

Free ⁄ iOS, Android

Brimming with patience and empathy? Neither’s likely to be at the forefront of your mind when going PEW-PEW-PEW. But with Sky: Children of the Light you’ll need them both in spades.

In this free-roaming adventure with a smattering of puzzling and a dollop of social multiplayer, you’re one of the titular children, locating spirits and returning them to the stars. There’s a lot of poking around caves, sliding down hills, crashing unceremoniously into hillsides like a drunk sparrow… and staring slack-jawed at how something this achingly gorgeous exists on a phone.