This is Free-App Hero
Many of you will know about this already, but for various reasons it's never actually been made official before now. Friends, colleagues, alert WoSblog viewers and the world in general, please welcome into your hearts and minds the infinite majesty of Free-App Hero.
Free-App Hero is an App Store tracker app with a difference – it delivers hundreds of fantastic free games without wasting your time with any of the thousands and thousands of terrible ones. Who wouldn't want that?
Something any vaguely alert new iThing user will quickly notice as soon as they start trying to navigate through the vast swamp of app releases is that there are already dozens of automated price-trackers. But while they're useful for telling you absolutely everything that's gone on promo they do nothing to actually filter out the stuff that's worth your time, and I was astonished when I realised that there wasn't a single one even trying to.
And with literally hundreds of apps going temporarily free every single day, who's got time to wade through all of those discarding the ad-infested "Lite" versions, money-sucking "freemium" affairs and the just plain awful to find the gems? Nobody with any common sense or an interesting and valued life to lead, that's who. Which only left me, as usual.
Free apps are big business now (as I write this three of the top five apps in Apple's all-important Top-Grossing chart are free downloads which make their money from ads and/or in-app purchases), and in addition to all the tracker apps there are dozens of individual sites and organisations all taking money from developers (sometimes thousands of dollars at a time) to promote their apps with freebie days.
The trouble with them (apart from it being a giant pain to check 20-odd different sites a day) is that none of them apply any quality judgements – if you've got the money to pay their fees, they'll hype up any old garbage.
Free-App Hero was created to be something very different – it filters the avalanche of daily freebies down to only the quality gear, and is answerable to no-one but its users. It doesn't feature freemium games which are basically just short demos where all the good stuff needs to be paid for, and it has an iron rule of NEVER including anything with in-game adverts – because we all hate in-game adverts, right?
FAH has two lists – a Recent one which details all the latest new freebies and temporary promos (which currently has around 50 games on it), and a Permanent list featuring well over 100 that as far as I can tell are always free, yet aren't hideously disfigured by ads.
(Presumably they're funded by the Mafia or Al-Qaeda and used to transmit secret messages to terrorists or something.)
And rather than just being a list of links, every game comes with a review so you know why it's worth your time. If you'd downloaded FAH when it came out, you'd have read over 330 of them by now, because that's how many games have appeared in the two lists since the app was launched.
Anyway, basically, Free-App Hero is awesome and if you have an iPod or an iPhone it'd be awfully nice if you bought it. (If you don't, buying it would be even nicer but somewhat beyond the call of duty.) In the ten weeks or so that it's been on sale so far it's gathered a pretty respectable audience of 15,000 users, scored a 9/10 review and climbed as high as No.29 in the Utilities chart, so you won't be alone.
There's even a free version (Free-App Hero Cheapskate Edition) for the sort of people who feel that £1.19 is too much to have someone find you top-notch games at the rate of over 100 a month (and you'd be amazed at how many people that is, even though the vast majority of FAH users have the full version).
FAH CE is ad-supported and has 100 fewer games in the Permanent list, but is otherwise identical and gets the same daily updates as the proper version. So hey, what have you got to lose?
THIS ADVERTISEMENT IS NOW OVER.
Awesome! Bought it and checking it out right now!
I knew it wasn't Lindsey Lohan!
Nice work on the app – it's awesome, just needs push notifications.
They’re under consideration, but they’re expensive and unreliable for a frequently-updated app. How often does the App Store app accurately report the number of updates you’ve got waiting, say?
Congratulations Stu. I've tried the full version and I'm impressed, very, very nice. It's immediately replaced OpenFeint's terrible GameChannel on my iPod. I hope this is a success for you.
Now having stumped up a whole £1.19 I now feel a sense of entitlement to tell you how you to make the app better.
I think the Permanently Free Apps section needs another way to organise the list, other than just Most Recent First. It's not much of a problem at the moment as their are 'only' a few hundred in there but over time this could easily increase to thousands and it'll be difficult to find older gems that might appeal.
Maybe you could add tags to each game so that PFA could be filtered according to genre. Maybe even a basic user rating system that put the most popular apps first. They could be a good up-sell from CE to the full version, too.
Ta for the feedback. The code is already in there to organise each list into “folders”, but I don’t want to fall into the trap of over-categorising everything so that it takes a tiresome amount of clicks and digging through levels of interface to find what you want, because you end up in endless quandaries about what genre something falls in. Does Pac-Man go in “Arcade” or “Retro”, to name but one made-up example? And so on.
I did it the current way deliberately because I like the “lucky dip” feel – after all, if you already know what app you’re looking for you don’t need us – but we may just re-order them into groups, or alphabetically, or we might do the folder thing in one form or another, or we might leave it as it is, with the most recent stuff at the top. It’s something we’re pondering.
Bought it… there is a lot on the permanent list which I haven't heard of, which is good.
Two things:
1) (BOLLOCKS – This comment is complete rubbish, it turns out the list is just a lot longer than I expected, and I was recognising stuff Stu has reccomended in the past. Uh, so it's even more awesome than I realised.)
2) "Created by professional game reviewers…" Why the lack of credit – I find it a bit odd, and I'm surprised you would agree to it.
Guessing it's British from the "rubbish"… do we know the others behind this, and we can know?
I wrote all the words in the app, so that wording is deliberate. The reason for it is also the reason I haven't announced it publicly before now. Sorry to be cryptic but hopefully all will become clear before too long.
"I like the “lucky dip” feel"
I completely agree and you're right to have it as the default option. I'm just thinking that someday I might suddenly feel in the mood for a racing game or a vertical shooter or a head scratching puzzle game and having the option to filter the recommendations would be a great addition
Having bought the app a couple of hours ago, i've spent much of that time messing around with the pretty awesome "Cat Physics", so the app has already proved mightily worthwhile
I still don't have an iThing, but this is a bloody BRILLIANT idea. And a rather clever way of being paid directly by 'readers' for your reviewing expertise. Hope it does really well for you.
PS: One tip, promote the FRIG out of it now, and later, and again,
so it becomes well known as 'the original' before the inevitable clones arrive.
We're doing as much as we can and have sent out dozens of promo codes to iOS sites, but the trouble with getting other sites to cover it is that they tend to regard it as competition, either for their own apps (so we haven't got much chance of getting in TouchArcade, makers of AppShopper) or for their reviews.
The best hope is for other people to plug it, because the chances of something being picked up are vastly lower if its own developer is hyping it than if it comes from the "grassroots". So if people want it to get bigger and better, help us out by mentioning it when you can. The more we flog, the more time and money we can afford to dedicate to improving and extending it.
I must admit, even after what happened I'm disappointed not to see it get a mention in Podgamer, on its own merits rather than because of (or despite) who made it.
Sounds good. I understand that there are a few free app finder apps already, but is this the first that is curated by humans rather than just indiscriminately scraping all the freebies from the app store?
After having actually played a 3DS, I've decided I don't want one, and am probably going to get an iThing at some point this week (assuming Gamestation have any in stock, since I have a shedload of credit there I want to use). I'll be sure to grab this if/when I do get one.
"Sounds good. I understand that there are a few free app finder apps already, but is this the first that is curated by humans rather than just indiscriminately scraping all the freebies from the app store?"
So far as I know, yes. When I realised there didn't seem to be one already I looked closely, but found nothing.
Do you not think you'd make more money pricing it at 59p though?
Oh-HO!
The price of FAH is an ongoing live experiment to see if utilities work the same way as games. It's had a couple of 59p promos already, as well as a free weekend. Data is inconclusive at this point.
Yeah this is decent. A cursory look yesterday nabbed me five apps that I'd never heard of before. Well worth the £1.19.
Constructively, the only thing that annoyed me a little was the app resetting after you go to the App Store. Still, that's only a tap and a bit of scrolling so it's a minor niggle.
Multitasking support is up at the top of the to-do list.
Any chance of a version for the Mac app store?
I know there's not as much stuff on there but it's a pain to navigate.
I'm still puzzled by what happened at Podgamer, and i guess the story will never be told, at least not in a while. Anyway, great app. I'm trying the free version, but i'm pretty sure i'll buy it soon.
"Any chance of a version for the Mac app store?"
Not until someone buys me a Mac.
Bought this yesterday and have to say it's a brilliant idea, I mean really genuinely useful. Picked up a couple of vertical shooters that were far better than I expected, the Chess problem game, Cat Physics, Rainy Day, and the Madworld/Streets Of Rage thingy. All justified the initial price of admission right there so it's all filthy profit from here on in. Great app but it'll consume my gaming free-time *completely*.
Just bought it, this is what I needed for my newly bought iPod Touch.
…and great, now I´ll be up all night. Well worth the money!
Yay! Feel free to leave us an iTunes review, they really help.
£2.39??? Christ on a bike.
Long story.
I'm waiting! I'd love to take a punt on it, but that's nowhere near the realm of "impulse buy" iStore kinda money.
Then I'd hang on a few days if I was you. Alternatively, I'll send you a promo code if you promise to write a review on iTunes.
Aye, course. Sounds like a fair deal my friend.
Message me from the WoSblog contact page with an email address, then.