The Play Store is easier to navigate these days, but at the same time the number of apps has ballooned to such proportions that you can easily miss the best stuff. We’re here to filter the flow of apps for you and pick out only the coolest stuff. The following apps are all worth your time, and maybe money. Make sure to hit the gallery above for images of each pick.

Weather Timeline
Weather apps have been done to death–there are probably a thousand different apps that offer the same data in more or less the same way. Then there’s Weather Timeline. This app pulls its data from Forecast.io and sets everything up as a timeline you can scroll through to get the forecast. It even lets you jump into the distant future to see what climate patterns predict for the world of tomorrow.

The interface in Weather Timeline is set up as a vertical list of cards. At the top is the current condition for your chosen location, then add you scroll down you get forecasts of the upcoming week. There’s also a handy snippet of text that tells you if there’s going to be any troublesome weather in the next hour or 48 hours. Each block is color coded as well with darker colors reserved for sunset/night as well as rain in the forecast.

At the top is a button for pulling up weather radar, and the bottom has the time machine. If you decide to travel into the future, Weather Timeline has a fun little DeLorean animation and Android L style animation. Don’t take the 20 year forecast as gospel, but it should be in the ballpark for dates closer to today. You can experience the weather in timeline format for the low price of $0.99.

Duet
Rhythm-based action games can be fun or incredibly aggravating, but the best games in this genre ride the border between these two extremes. This is the case with Duet, which seems fundamentally impossible when you begin playing. Your goal is to spin the red and blue orbs around each other in an intricate dance that allows the to avoid all the oncoming obstacles.

The blocks raining down from the top of the screen will start off moving at the same speed all the time, but that’s only to get you used to the controls. You simply press and hold on the left or right side of the screen to turn counter-clockwise and clockwise. If you don’t turn at the right time to swing one of the orbs out of the way–splat. You have to begin the level again.

As you get used to the basics, Duet will throw new types of blocks at you. They might fall at different speeds, swing back and forth, or even spin like helicopter blades. You can really only succeed in Duet if you can get into the zone and stop thinking about how long to press on the screen–you must become the game. Sparing even a moment to explicitly plan your moves will result in failure.

Each level in Duet is no more than a minute long, but it might take a long, long time to beat it. The sense accomplishment when you do it, though, is amazing. Duet is a free download with full version in-app purchase upgrade for $2.99. The game is definitely worth it, but the soundtrack is excellent too.

Google News and Weather
Google first bundled a news and weather app with Android years ago and proceeded to forget all about it. Now the News and Weather app has been added to Google Play and it will make a handsome addition to any home screen. It actually looks a bit like the Google Now widget, but it doesn’t take up a stupid amount of screen space.

This app comes with a pair of widgets–one for only weather or news, and one that has weather up top and a scrollable news stream below. The second one is resizable to fit in any layout, but it needs at least two rows to work. Tapping on a story will open the link in your default browser immediately, but the news and weather app lists additional stories. You can also set your news preferences here and browse around in different sections.

The weather data will automatically update based on your location with current conditions and several days of forecast on the home screen, but the number shown depends on how large you have the widget. In the app, the forecast also comes with a neat temperature and precipitation graph. It’s a nice little app and costs nothing whatsoever.

CounterSpy
What’s an elite spy to do when his skills are not appreciated by his own government? Go freelance, of course. that’s the theme in CounterSpy from Sony Mobile. This game has just debuted on Android but it ties into the console version available on the PlayStation Network. You can play it just fine without the PlayStation version, though.

This is a sidescrolling stealth action game with awesome cel shaded graphics. Each level is filled with secrets to steal and enemies to take out, but only by carefully planning will you be able to get out without raising the alarm. The game uses a DEFCON warning system, which you need to keep as far away from DEFCON 1 as possible. If you are spotted by guards or killed in action, the DEFCON level increases. Hitting DEFCON 1 starts a timer that limits how long you have to finish the level.

Controls in CounterSpy very touch-oriented, but it also supports controllers for more precise movements. Simply swipe left or right to walk and double-tap to take cover or interact with an object. This is also how you stealthily take out a guard. When killing at a distance, you can tap and hold to aim your weapon, and tap with a second finger to fire. While much of the game is 2D, there are places where you can take cover and aim down the previously 2D corridor. It’s very fluid and gives CounterSpy a deeper feel.

The more levels you complete, the more cash you’ll have to buy upgrades and equipment to keep fighting the (possibly) good fight. CounterSpy is $4.99 in the Play Store, but it’s worth the price.

MyScript Smart Note
The developers behind MyScript Calculator have just released a new app that again takes advantage of the same scary-accurate handwriting recognition. Instead of doing math, this app is for taking notes. MyScript Smart Note works best with a stylus (either third-party or a built-in one), but your finger gets the job done too. The app can even tell the difference between a stylus and your hand, allowing it to do reasonably good palm rejection.

Like the calculator app, Smart note can transcribe your writing as you go, but it can also leave those chicken scratches alone and simply make them searchable. That is, it knows what words you’re writing even if you prefer to keep everything in your own handwriting. Smart Note makes it easy to manage and search handwritten notes in the same way you would a regular document. The transcription is also just incredible. Even things I’m sure would be unreadable to most human beings are understood correctly by Smart Note.

You can also add diagrams and sketches with the drawing tool, which is separate from the standard writing input, but it’s easy to toggle between them. The basic app is available for free with up to ten pages of notes in a single notebook. The $3 in-app upgrade to the pro version adds unlimited notes and cloud sync with s Note, Evernote, and Dropbox.

Block Fortress
What if Minecraft was more like a tower defense game? It would essentially be Block Fortress. The look of this game will be very familiar to anyone who has even glanced at Minecraft–it has the same retro blocky graphics, but the gameplay is much more action oriented. You still get to design and build wacky creations, but it’s all with the intention of fighting off the waves of creeps.

At the beginning of each game, you get to place your barracks anyplace on the map. The game is over when it’s destroyed, so you need to protect it from damage by surrounding it with walls, traps, and weapon blocks. Each wave of monsters brings new challenges, but also an influx of cash that can be used to improve your base of operations. Only by upgrading your base with bigger guns and stronger walls will you be able to survive.

When you’re ready to start a wave, your character drops down to ground level to do battle in first-person mode. You and your trusty robot sidekick can fight the creeps, or focus on repairing structures as the creeps try to reach your base. Beating waves also grants you special materials that can improve your blocks and weapons across all the maps. You can even jump back and forth between multiple games to get an assortment of materials for better, faster upgrades.

This game costs $1.99, which is a steal considering how much gameplay there is. The in-app purchases are for optional upgrades to your robot sidekick, but you can get along fine without that.

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