I fondly remembered playing the first season of The Walking Dead. It was a deeply affecting choice based adventure game. As I reached the conclusion to that first season I realised how effective narrative experiences could go even beyond your expectations when you added a degree of interactivity to them. It was a game lauded by both players and critics alike. But over the years the studio was mired in controversy. Layoffs and toxic working conditions had become common talking points about the studio. So it is with much sadness to learn that the studio would be closing down with just a few employees remaining to wrap up any remaining projects. How a studio which was once considered as a benchmark for narrative based interactive experiences could have fallen so far?

Translucent TB  is a wonderful Windows 10 taskbar customisation tool that let’s you apply some new styles to the taskbar like fully transparent and fluent design versions.

While the Windows app store has several proper podcasting apps to choose from I still prefer using the excellent Pocket Casts web app by Shifty Jelly. It has a superb, snappy interface that for me works better than even most native apps. It also has the the advatage of syncing via an account across it’s apps on other platforms as well.

So it was a pleasant surprise to see them introduce a Windows app in the store. While this is not a native app it is a hosted web app which works very well. The functionality I missed most sorely was the ability to pause and resume a podcast natively like any other native audio app.

The app is not free but it has a 14 day trial and only a one time fee of $9.

Get the app from here

IA Writer is a minimal writing app that has been fairly popular on MacOS and mobile platforms for several years now. Creative writing apps of that quality are few and far between on the Windows platform so it’s great to see the developer has plans to bring it to the Windows platform. While they have a working version ready for polish they need some help in the final phase before bringing it live. You can support them via their kickstarter campaign here.

Microsoft To Do the successor to Wunderlist has been progressing well. While I always imagined it to be a proprietary app with no way to modify it an enterprising developer has done just that. While it maintains the same basic look and feel of the original To DO app it spices it up with a few useful additions that can be accessed via a set of shortcut keys. Some of the key additions are.

Multiple Color Themes

Compact Mode

List Navigation

Custom Shortcut Keys

Scalable Interface

Download the app and find out more here

Dropbox for Windows 10 just hit version 5.0. It brings with a stunning Fluent design inspired update. Download it here

Nylas N1 was a slick open source desktop email client that we had covered almost a year back. In the interim however it went through a change in it’s business model to become a subscription based pro only email app. However having gone a change of heart the app is now back with a free version with several of it’s pro only features brought over to the free version which is now just called as Nylas Mail. You can read more details about this release here.

Netflix for Windows 10 just got an awesome update that adds the option to downloads some of it’s shows and movies offline. This is great news for those who are reliant on the service but don’t have the most realiable internet connections. The only caveat is that not all content in it’s library has the offline download option. Most of Netflix’s own shows do have the option so that a good thing.

Download it from the link here

If you use the awesome trakt.tv site to track TV shows that you watch then this app is perfect for you. There is a decent selection of apps to choose from when it comes to apps that sync with your Trakt.tv account but this TV Show Tracker UWP is the best.

It presents your TV shows in easy to access and intuitive manner. The other strong feature is how reliably it works with syncing your data with your Trakt.tv account. Since UWP app it works beautifully across your desktop and mobile devices. We tried all of the different apps that were available across the store and for a free offering this one comes out on top. Get the app from the link here