Image rights from top: James Saeed, Liron Barzilai.
Hour Blocks is a time–
planning and scheduling app
that aims to stand out In
a crowded market by helping
you focus on what’s right in front of you.
It hooks into your Calendar, allowing
you to choose which calendars you use
with it. So far, so ordinary. However, Hour
Blocks only displays the next 48 hours’
worth of activity, broken down by hour
in large blocks (hour blocks, geddit?).
Adding an appointment or task is as easy
as tapping “ADD” on the hour you want
to add it. If you want to spread an activity
across multiple hours, you’ll have to add
it individually to each hour block, you
The 7th Guest was a classic
creepy ’90s puzzler and,
to celebrate its 25th
anniversary, it’s been
remastered for iOS. Sadly, in this house
of mysteries, not all is as it seems.
You play a guest of the mysterious
toymaker Henry Stauf, who has trapped
you and six other guests inside his
seemingly haunted mansion on the
promise of an entertaining soirée. Solve
the puzzles and he will grant you your
heart’s desires — but only one guest will
see through this Faustian bargain.
Unfortunately, “remastered” is used in
only the loosest sense. The developer
Hour Blocks
Focus on today’s tasks and forget what’s ahead
$0.99 From James Saeed, jtsaeed.com
Made for iPhone, iPad, iPod touch, Apple Watch Needs iOS 11.0 or later
The 7th Guest: Remastered
A fun but flawed Faustian affair
$5.99 From Liron Barzilai, mojo-touch.com
Made for iPhone, iPad, iPod touch Needs iOS 8.0 or later
GREATOKAYHour Blocks displays icons for each task based
on the name of the task.The “high” graphics setting looks like the
“original” option with a blur filter applied.can’t just set a start and finish time. And
tasks imported via Calendars that take
place across multiple hours are displayed
in each hour they’re scheduled for. It’s an
approach that makes complete sense in
the context of the app.
We particularly liked the way Hour
Blocks interprets the text in your task
and displays an appropriate icon
alongside it, such as a knife and fork next
to a lunch appointment. But we weren’t
so keen on it putting everything in title
case, no matter how we typed it.
How much you get from Hour Blocks
will depend on how meticulous you are
about scheduling. If you go days withoutpromises “stunningly rendered”
graphics, but now instead of heavily
pixelated scenes, you’re greeted by
blurry, low–poly ones. Some audio snippets
retain raspy compression artefacts. Some
icons — like the hotspot indicator — are
high quality, which only goes to highlight
the disappointing graphics elsewhere.
There are improvements, though. The
save/load system is a welcome addition,
as is the ability to highlight all the touch
hotspots in each room; the music has
also been re–recorded. The original was
a point–and–click classic, and that system
translates well to a touchscreen device.
Most of the riddles are easy to play butappointments or tasks, all you’ll see is
a screen full of empty blocks. If, on the
other hand, you like to list every activity,
it may well help you focus on the present.
THE BOTTOM LINE. If you like the
idea of seeing every hour of your life
planned out, then Hour Blocks is for you.
KENNY HEMPHILLhard to solve, which is just how we like it.
The game is still as fun and tricky as it
was 25 years ago, and it’ll provide plenty
of entertainment, but we’d hoped for
more from a remastered edition.
THE BOTTOM LINE. A fun game that
will test all ages, but very disappointing
graphically. ALEX BLAKEmaclife.com SEP 2019 63Tough testing, trusted ratings