Windows Phone 8 Apps + Games

Since summer of last year, Electronic Arts and Chillingo have been pumping out Nokia-exclusive Xbox Windows Phone games. Players not fortunate enough to own Nokia phones sometimes feel left out and/or upset because they can’t access those games from their phones. But we are talking about timed exclusivity here.

Six months after release, Mirror’s Edge became available to all Windows Phone users, followed by Risk and Connect 4. So while owners of HTC, Samsung, and other non-Nokia devices have to wait a while, Nokia’s deal with EA does pay off for them as well.

This week, two more former exclusives became available to all Windows Phone users: The Game of Life and Parking Mania. As if that wasn’t enough, Shoot 1UP, an Xbox game that was found to be incompatible with Windows Phone 8 has just gained compatibility. Gotta love being able to play more stuff!

Tired of old-school construction games that lack real action? You're not alone. This very quote kicks off the description for Game Insight's latest release for Windows Phone, My Country. The game is essentially a challenging city builder with more content than one would expect. Players are tasked with developing industries, transportation infrastructure, hiring employees, eliminating ecological threats and controlling energy use.

Oh, did we mention you're building your own country too? 

DreamWorks Animation has a new film coming out later this summer called Turbo. It’s an animated film about a little garden snail who dreams of becoming the fastest thing around. We’ve attached a trailer below if you’re interested. Anyway, there’s a companion game out now for Windows Phone 8! Let’s check it out.

Epic Battle Dude is an action packed Windows Phone 8 game where you play the role of a king who has to battle a variety of monsters that have invaded your land and kidnapped your queen.

Epic Battle Dude has had decent success over on the Android and iOS platforms and we can see why. The game has bold graphics, simple but addictive game play, fifty levels of play and fantastic sound effects. It even has a unique approach to adjusting the volume in the game's settings.

Epic Battle Dude is quickly becoming our favorite new game and with it being free, dude, you've gotta give it a try.

If you're not familiar with what Good is all about, it's an enterprise messaging service. We've had an app available for Windows Phone since last year, but now we're looking at a large update, which bundles Windows Phone 8 support with a list of improvements and new features. Version 1.8 expands on the foundation already available on the store with more functionality for those who take security rather seriously.

Memorylage is a photography app for your Windows Phone 8 device that lets you view your photo albums in collage style, create collages, share your photos and use them as your lockscreen collage-styled wallpaper. It's a nice alternative to the native Pictures Hub and was recently updated to version 1.2.

The update brings a handful of new features and performance tweaks. Lockscreen collages can now be automatically generate (you can still manually create them) and updated periodically from your collage library. You can now adjust the margin between images and select which photo albums you want the collage generator to pull the photos from.

It’s time for another new Xbox Windows Phone game this week. Sadly, Gameloft’s N.O.V.A. 3 didn’t make it out yet, but we still expect it at the end of May or early June. Instead, this week’s release is the not too surprising but still appreciated Angry Birds Rio from Rovio.

I say not surprising because two weeks ago Microsoft and Nokia both announced that Rio would be coming very soon. They weren’t lying! Meanwhile, Angry Birds Rio has also flown in on Windows Phone 7 without Xbox Live features, just as we predicted. Now then, what makes this Rio game different from the 1500 other official Angry Birds titles already available on Windows Phone? Read on to find out.

We knew that Camera360 was a popular Windows Phone photography app but apparently it has become the first mobile photography app to pass 100 million global users.

Granted Windows Phone can't take claim to all these users with Camera360 being available over on iOS and Android devices. But still, 100 million is impressive.