Beat the climate in Good Weather

Good Weather (stylized "good ・weather") is a new iOS app from Fried Cookie. It's available now as a free download from the App Store, with no additional in-app purchases. It's currently featured on the App Store front page. Good Weather is a simple, minimalist weather app that allows users to view the current weather either in their current location or in a city they have searched for around the world. The information displayed includes the current temperature (in Celsius or Fahrenheit at the user's choice), an iconographic depiction of the current conditions, a text description of the current conditions and wind speed, humidity and cloud cover statistics. Each condition has its own color scheme and short animation to introduce itself, which can be repeated at will simply by tapping the screen. The search function allows users to search for specific cities around the globe, and also comes preloaded with several fictional locations including Winterfell from Game of Thrones, Neverland from Peter Pan and Oz from The Wizard of Oz. Each of these locations has thematically-appropriate weather -- it rains in Winterfell, is sunny with no clouds whatsoever in Oz and snows in Neverland. The main "unique selling point" that Fried Cookie is hoping will attract users to Good Weather is the presence of a selection of different minigames related to the different weather conditions. Upon viewing the daily forecast for a particular location, the user may tap on a "play" button at the bottom of the screen to start playing a game. Fried Cookie claims that there are 30 different minigames to corespond with the different weather conditions, with more on the way, but in practice a lot of these games are the same as each other with different graphics and color schemes. For example, both the "sunny spells" and "light snow showers" games are the same Doodle Jump clone with badly-calibrated tilt controls; both the "sunny" and "hailstorm" games require the player to "juggle" objects on the screen without dropping all of them. The app tracks the user's high score in each of the minigames along with when they were last played, but treats each weather condition as its own unique game rather than bundling all the "bounce," "juggle" and other games together as one. There is also no means of comparing high scores with friends via Game Center or social media -- the records board is purely for the user's own amusement. Good Weather is a well-presented app with smooth animations, clean, crisp and attractive graphics and high-quality, catchy music in the minigames. It's a fun diversion rather than a serious weather app -- and to be fair it doesn't claim to be anything else -- but if it wants to be taken seriously as a competitor for more fully-featured weather apps (or even fellow "minimalist" apps such as Appsuperb's Weathercube) it could do with a few additional features. Most notably, it could do with forecasts for the future as well as just the current day -- and if Fried Cookie wants to run with the minigame idea, it should look at implementing a wider selection rather than reusing the same games with different graphics for different weather conditions. Social features such as Game Center support or simply the means to post high scores to Twitter and/or Facebook wouldn't hurt, either -- and would have the helpful side-effect of promoting the app. On the whole, Good Weather is a fun little app that is worth a look, particularly as it's free. Given its relative lack of features compared to other weather apps, however, it's probably unlikely it will stay on many users' phones for very long. You can follow Good Weather's progress with AppData, our tracking service for mobile and social apps and developers.

Social Pro Daily

Beat the climate in Good Weather

Pete Davison

About

Subscriptions

Events

Publications

WORK SMARTER - LEARN, GROW AND BE INSPIRED.

Subscribe today!

Pete Davison