April
Paint by numbers, iOS style
Free (IAPs) From Crimson Pine Games, crimsonpine.com Made for iPhone, iPad Needs iOS 9.0 or later
Do you remember painting by numbers, the fiddly but incredibly satisfying way to pretend you could paint? April brings it to iOS with some welcome enhancements. You can paint with fingers, stylus, or Apple Pencil, and unlike real paints you don’t need to worry about going over edges. Pictures range from simple images to complex landmarks and portraits, and it’s impossible to make a mistake: when you tap on a numbered area, April automatically selects every section requiring the appropriate color. As you’d expect you can pinch to zoom and swipe to move around.
April is simple to use, very rewarding and incredibly relaxing no matter what age you are: we found April delighted our resident four–year-old scribbler, his ten– year-old sister and their mumble– mumble–year–old dad equally.
We were a little less delighted by the pricing, however. April is a freemium app, and many of its canvases remain locked unless you shell out for a monthly subscription ($9.99) or buy in–game coins ($2.99 for a small stack). The former is better value for money, but it’s still nearly $120 per year. That’s much more expensive than, say, an annual subscription to your favorite Apple magazine. Of course, the App Store is absolutely packed with freemium painting and coloring apps so it’s worth trying a few before deciding whether to sign up for this particular one.
the bottom line. April is a good, but expensive way to do fairly simple painting.