30 best iPhone and iPad apps this week

It's time for our weekly roundup of brand new and notable apps for iPhone, iPod touch and iPad devices. And there wasn't one last week, so today's is a BUMPER 30-apps roundup.

It covers apps and games, with the prices referring to the initial download: so (Free) may mean (Freemium) in some cases. There's a separate roundup for Android apps, which was published earlier in the day.

For now, read on for this week's iOS selection (and when you've finished, check out previous Best iPhone and iPad apps posts).

Toca Mini (£1.99)

Toca Mini is a delightful creative application from children's apps publisher Toca Boca. It involves creating 3D characters using facial features, hair and stripes of colour, like an (even more) child-friendly version of Nintendo's Miis. Characters can be snapshotted and saved once finished.
iPhone / iPad

Life in the Womb (£2.99)

This is big – 1.12GB – but thoroughly worth it: a "visual guide to pregnancy" with a mixture of images, animation and interactivity to show what's happening over the course of a pregnancy. A fantastic resource for parents-to-be.
iPad

Papa Sangre II (£2.49)

The first Papa Sangre was a real treat: an eerie audio-only adventure game voiced by the (then not-so-well-known) actor Benedict Cumberbatch. For the sequel, developer Somethin' Else has roped in Sean Bean for narration duties, and the gameplay is as genuinely-creepy as ever as you explore a world conjured up by your own imagination.
iPhone / iPad

BBM (Free)

With 20m downloads on iOS and Android in its first week, BBM is already finding an audience beyond its traditional home of BlackBerry smartphones. The messaging app brings its familiar features for solo and group chat to iPhone, with the promise of updates adding more functionality in the months to come.
iPhone

Portal Entertainment's 'The Craftsman' (Free)

There's a fuller piece on The Craftsman that explains its appeal at more length: a gothic thriller designed to be experienced over five days, with notifications used to pull you back into the (extremely) spooky story. It's innovative technically, but that's not the most important thing: it's a wonderful story.
iPad

Tweetbot 3 for Twitter (£1.99)

There's been a bit of a rumpus over the decision of Twitter app Tweetbot's developer to charge for its latest update by making it a separate app. It's still the best alternative to the official Twitter app available – and many users think it's much better – with a slick new iOS 7-friendly design.
iPhone

Puzzle & Dragons (Free)

Puzzle & Dragons is quite possibly the most lucrative mobile game in the world right now, but it's only just been released in the UK. It's a mixture of Pokemon and Puzzle Quest that sees you capturing monsters and organising them into teams to fight others by matching coloured orbs. Time will tell whether it will catch on with a mainstream British audience.
iPhone / iPad

Tiny Games (Free)

Tiny Games is brilliant: an app that asks you where you are and how many people you're with before suggesting micro-games to play in the real world, using the objects at hand. There are hundreds to discover, and it's the ideal alternative to sitting round a table with friends or colleagues morosely checking your respective inboxes or Facebook and Twitter feeds.
iPhone / iPad

Telegram Messenger (Free)

NSA surveillance has the world spooked about the security of their online communications, so it's no surprise to see some app developers trying to capitalise. Telegram is a one-to-one and group chat app that includes a "Secret Chats" mode with encryption at both ends of the conversation, and self-destructing messages.
iPhone

Bandcamp (Free)

Independent musicians have earned more than $50m from selling music and products through their Bandcamp profiles. Now the company has its own mobile app, through which you can stream the music you've bought and listen to its weekly radio show. Future updates will help you discover new bands you might like too.
iPhone

Chippy (£1.99)

As far as I know, this is the world's first fish'n'chip shop simulator, and for that I salute it. Chippy is a time management game, like Diner Dash with extra batter and salt. You run a chippy and have to fry up food to keep your customers happy, with the difficulty level increasing as you go. It's quirky and really good fun.
iPhone / iPad

Cannonball eMail (Free)

Lots of startups are currently trying to fix email (and if your inbox looks like mine, you'll know why email is broken). This app is tablet-only and Gmail-only for now, but offers a well-designed way to separate out different kinds of emails and deal with your daily communications load.
iPad

Juice Cubes (Free)

This is essentially Candy Crush Saga with square-shaped fruit rather than sweets, but it's very well done. Published by Angry Birds maker Rovio, it features 165 levels of fruit-matching puzzling, with combos, Facebook integration and in-app purchases used to buy power-ups when it gets too tough.
iPhone / iPad

Dubble (Free)

There's something rather special about Dubble: a photo-sharing app based round double exposures with strangers. Not in the likely-to-lead-to-an-arrest sense. You take a picture with your iPhone, then it gets mixed with an image from another user, chosen at random. And this may sound like a novelty, but the results can be beautiful.
iPhone

HarperCollins Reader (Free)

Book publishers are quietly excited about the idea of selling e-books direct to their readers, although it's early days for this kind of business model. HarperCollins Reader is a start though: it's no Kindle-killer yet, but it does let you dig in to the catalogue of Narnia creator C.S. Lewis, complete with one free e-book.
iPhone / iPad

BIT.TRIP RUN! (£2.49)

Music games aren't the force they were on consoles, but there's some really fun experimentation going on for tablets and smartphones. BIT.TRIP.RUN is a good example: a "rhythm-music platforming" game that's packed with colour and sound.
iPhone / iPad

Manga by Crunchyroll (Free)

Something for fans of Japanese Manga comics here: the official app for the Crunchyroll website that promises new content "as soon as it hits newsstands in Japan". A premium subscription to Crunchyroll is required to make the most of it, but if you have that, the app provides full access to its catalogue.
iPhone / iPad

Thor: The Dark World (Free)

Bad news: the new film Thor: The Dark World is apparently "punctuated by thunderous boredom" according to The Guardian's review. The official mobile game looks better though: an action-packed breeze through 90 suitably-epic missions, with in-app purchases used to ensure your hammer is primed and ready.
iPhone / iPad

Strikr (Free)

There's already a great second-screen app for football: it's called Twitter. Also Facebook. But Carlsberg is having a go at its own dedicated football app too. Based on the Barclays Premier League, it offers live scores and stats during matches and hooks into Twitter to see what other fans are saying.
iPhone / iPad

Dead Trigger 2 (Free)

The original Dead Trigger was a made-for-mobile first-person-shooter by developer MadFinger Games, and it's so far notched up more than 23m downloads. The sequel amps up the action: more zombies, including bosses, and more weapons to dispatch them with. The graphics are also a draw: this is one of the best-looking Android games in recent times.
iPhone / iPad

The Hunting (Free)

And yet more zombies. "The world's first interactive zombie movie app," to be specific. Shot on iPhones and designed to be viewed on iPhones, it's a first-person spookfest. And if you like this, you can also get part two as an app.
iPhone

Knoala (Free)

This is a marvellous idea: an app for parents suggesting daily activities to do with their young children: "silly games that foster artistic, cognitive, emotional, motor, sensory, language skills and more" in the words of the App Store listing. So, not an app to get your child staring at a screen, but an app with suggestions to fuel the exact opposite.
iPhone

Stack Rabbit (Free)

This comes from an interesting source: Tim FitzRandolph, who came up with Where's My Water? for Disney. This time (with the same publisher) the hero is a rabbit who has to match vegetables on a farm without getting caught by a guard dog. In-app purchases pay for power-ups.
iPhone / iPad

Stride & Prejudice (£0.69)

I love the fact that this exists: an endless-runner game where the text of Jane Austen's Pride & Prejudice acts as the platforms, complete with a mode where you start each time where you died the last time – so you can eventually read the whole book.
iPhone / iPad

Avira Mobile Security (Free)

Antivirus firms are licking their lips at the growing sense of unease among smartphone owners about security and privacy. In the case of Avira's new app, that means the promise to scan for "malicious" processes, optimisation tools for your battery, and features to help find your iPhone if it's missing. Although you might argue that Apple has the latter covered already.
iPhone

North Pole – Animal Adventures for Kids (£1.99)

Developer Fox & Sheep has made some of my favourite children's apps, including Little Fox Music Box and Nighty Night. This one is all about Arctic animals, with 40 for kids to find out about through facts, animation and sounds.
iPad

NinJump Rooftops (Free)

More endless running (and jumping), this time without literary intent. NinJump Rooftops is pretty much what you can imagine: a ninja running across rooftops, duffing up enemies along the way. There's also an enormous building-sized panda, which should be encouraged in modern mobile gaming.
iPhone / iPad

Shoto (Free)

Shoto isn't the first app to think about group photo-sharing from specific events and locations – Cooliris has been at it for years – but it may be of interest. The app aims to gather photos taken by friends at the same event and make them available to the group, using location and contacts data.
iPhone

Gneo (£2.99)

I'm still looking for the perfect to-do list app, to bring order to my chaotic working life. Gneo has potential: as much a calendar as a task manager, helping you organise what you have to do and when you need to do it by.
iPhone / iPad

Pocket God: Ooga Jump (£0.69)

Finally, a new spin-off for one of the first big indie-game hits on iPhone, Pocket God. Ooga Jump takes its inspiration from Doodle Jump, as your pygmy character bounces upward, fuelled (if you want to pay) by various power-ups.
iPhone / iPad

That's this week's selection, but what do you think? Make your own recommendations, or give your views on the apps above, by posting a comment.