APP REVIEWS

Rider

Are you harboring an inner daredevil?

Rider puts you in charge of a car that's revving to go down racetracks that defy gravity and aren't shy about letting you crash. The controls for Rider are simple: Tap to accelerate, and hold your finger down on the screen to execute a flip. Flips are for more than just style points. Sometimes you need to take a spin to advance to the next part of the track. Be prepared for frequent vehicle crashes, as landing even slightly askew sends your vehicle flying into bits and pieces. But don't worry, you get more than one chance to tackle the track.

Fancy flips will help you earn more points, but they also raise your chances of falling to pieces once you hit the ground. Figuring out the right balance as you go through the track is the main goal of the game. Rider is adsupported, and the ads come up fairly frequently — particularly if you're dying in rapid succession. You can pay $2 to remove ads or watch ads to get more in-game currency, gems, which let you return to the road after crashes.

Overall, Rider isn't exactly relaxing, but it is fun and a good way to pass the time as long as you can keep your disappointment over crashes to yourself.

Free, for Android and iOS.

New Pixels

If there's one thing that you can learn from New Pixels, it's that you don't always have to think outside the box to make cool art. New Pixels presents you with a grid — the size can be of your choosing — a handful of patterns and colors. Tapping on a color and pattern, then a grid square, fills in each square accordingly. Put it all together, and you may be amazed at the art you can create. Half-circles and dots quickly turn into blocky self-portraits, landscapes and other fun tableaux. Part of the fun is figuring out how to sketch what's in your mind's eye with just the basic building blocks of colors and shapes.

Need some inspiration? New Pixels also lets users flip through a gallery of work others have submitted to the app. You can even tap on it to import it to your own grid to modify a picture or as a guide to figure out how to stretch your skills even further. You can also save your creations or share them easily to Facebook and Twitter. Saving a picture requires access to your phone's photo album, and sharing obviously requires you to have your phone connected to a social network. While you may not be creating masterpieces, it's a nice way to get a more frequent dose of doodling. After all, any excuse to be creative is a good one.

Free, for iOS.