Appscribe Review - All you can eat gaming service for a monthly fee

So we have been playing around with an all-you-can-eat game subscription service for Android called Appscribe. If that sounds familiar to you, it may be due to us reporting on it back in August, more from a developer standpoint than a user one. This review is based on being a user of the service which is actually pretty nice.

There are a few services set to be released, or are just coming out, that will be offering similar services such as WildTangent's game rental service that just came out for T-Mobile Android customers. Appscribe brings a catalog of over 40+ premium games that you can download, install and play as much as you like for a low monthly fee.

Game Selection:

The selection of games on Appscribe, while being only 40+ at the time of me writing and reviewing the service, were actually some really solid good games. There are actually a fair amount of popular big named titles on there as well as popular indie titles. A sample of names would go along the lines of:

• Roboto
• Art of War 2
• Wisp
• Townsmen 6
• Lord of Magic
• Quell
• Guns N' Glory
• Majesty: Fantasy Kingdom
• Farm Frenzy
• Legends of Yore
• Zixxby

That's just a sample and most of those games in the list can be found on this site if you want to check them out. Appscribe doesn't just have games on their but actual applications as well that fall under your subscription as well. However, we are all about the games. The developers behind Appscribe are added new titles all the time so even though the selection may seem a bit small right now at only being 40+ titles, it will continue to grow but for a starting stock, it's a good selection. At any time you can uninstall a game and grab another or just keep it on your device as long as you want.

You can take a look at the selection of most of the games on there through their website as well.

The Application itself:

The application is a small install which will leave plenty of room for all the games you'll be wanting to download and play. Once you have an account you just sign in and you are ready to browse the selection of games (and applications). Each individual game listing is detailed with nice long explanations of the game, features list, pictures of the game you can click on and a big button to push to install a game that you choose. The listings are very nicely laid out and look as though developed can use a little html in the to spice them up a big with headings.

Categories are broken down in a similar style to what you see on the Android Market: Action & Adventure, Brain & Puzzle, Cards & Casino and so on. There is also an option just to view them all at which has been my preferred option to use so far. The categories do what they should although when their catalog gets much bigger it would be better to have a bit more of a specific category breakdown instead of such the wide embracing ones.

The only thing I haven't found appealing about Appscribe is the actual design of the application itself. While the listings for each game are very nice and even the listing of the categories are nice with little icons for each game, the overall user interface is a bit bland. In this day and age with Android phones, you can do so much in terms of styling and design. The entire application is just white with some grey in it which makes it feel a bit plain. It doesn't detract from the service and the app functions well. Haven't had a single hiccup so far on my G2X with it. It could just use a bit more style to it.

In the end:

When everything is said and done, Appscribe is an interesting service with a lot of potential to be big. The catalog will continue to grow and the games on their already are a solid selection. As for pricing, it's an all-you-can-eat format for $1.95 a month or you can pay it quarterly for $5.85 which seems quite reasonable. It does come with a trial period of 3 days so you can test it out for yourself and see if you like it. This service will definitely appeal to those people out there that like to install and uninstall a lot of games. A little polish on the actual application itself and it would be good to go.

For all the nitty gritty details and for developers interested in using this service, there is a FAQ over on their official site as well. Oh, and one last thing, you don't need to be rooted of course to use this, unless you're on AT&T since they block access outside of the Android Market when it comes to installing things. Even Amazon gets that shaft.

Official Website: Appscribe