'Year Walk' nabs this month's prize for best smartphone app

FierceMobileContent Editor Jason Ankeny every month looks at the market's most innovative and noteworthy iOS and Android apps. And every month he ranks the industry's top apps, highlighting the immersive mobile experiences that are entering app stores each day. This month, the game Year Walk takes the top prize. It's a game so complex and multi-faceted that it comes with its own free companion app detailing its folkloric inspirations. Set in 19th-century Sweden, Year Walk depicts a vision quest through a bleak, ghostly forest; you're thrust into this strange world with no map, no instructions and no direction, and the sense of isolation is palpable. The purpose of your mission slowly but surely sharpens into focus as you solve puzzles and interact with the strange creatures and landmarks populating the forest, but the game never unfolds in any conventional way--it's ultimately more about the journey than the destination, championing existential dread and despair over logic and action. Special Report