I'm not quite sure how to describe LifeBox (free until Mid-January). It's a bit like the infamous Pet Rock of years ago or the more recent Tamagotchi. It just sits there, but unlike the Pet Rock, little stories unfold over time in tiny animated boxes. When you start, the app creates five boxes with animated stick figures inside. As you watch them, they will do entertaining things, but you can't really interact with them in any way.
You can move the boxes, add or delete boxes, even add wallpaper from your photo library as backgrounds. There are 15 different kinds of boxes, and when you select them you'll get a description of what's going on inside. You can get help from the app, and it gives you the basics of adding and subtracting things on your screen.
A US$1.99 in app purchase gives you colored boxes.
This is the kind of app that will excite some people and leave others scratching their heads.
The size of the app, 350 MB, tells you there is more here than meets the casual eye. Just stay with the animations and watch for interesting things to happen. They won't happen right away. Feature-wise the app is pretty sparse. You can mail or send your screen to social media, but the shared image is not animated so the charm is lost.
I liked LifeBox because it is original, and isn't what it appears at first. I saw a few bugs. For example, when adding a new box the app reported it couldn't do it, but then it did.
It didn't run well on my iPad Air 2. The app seemed stuck and didn't want to launch. It's not a universal app and I guess they mean it.
LifeBox requires iOS 7 or later. It's optimized for the iPhone 5 and 6 series of hardware. While it says it will run on an iPad, I couldn't get it to run at all so be forewarned. That's life, I guess.
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