Appysnap turns iPhone photography into a quick-fire game

There are no shortage of games on Apple’s App Store; app developers are constantly evolving their ideas to create the next Angry Birds.

Some apps function as useful services, trying to add gaming elements to prompt users to come back to the app, but with gamification often coming as an afterthought, many services fail to attract a large userbase.

Appysnap is an app that motivates users to play a game, not on their handsets, but by interacting with objects in the world around them. The new iPhone application sets users “missions”, challenging users to take a photo of a specific object within a set time (night or day) and rewarding them with prizes for completing them.

Appysnap will prompt the user with a text message style notification, alerting them to a new mission that has been added to the missions section of the application, listing all other outstanding missions that haven’t been completed.

If missions are completed quickly, Appysnap will reward users for completing them before others. Never Odd Or Even, developer of the app, says that users can win iPads, Kindles and Amazon vouchers but we weren’t quick enough to get that all-important notification.

As well as prizes, Appysnap allows its users to collect “caps”, which serve as points that can be redeemed for deals and offers. The user with the most “caps” at the end of the month is also eligible to win a special prize.

Some of the first missions sent to us were requests to take a picture of ourselves and to share a photo that had three or more people in it. The app is available to iPhone owners all over the world but Appysnap will occasionally send missions to players in specific towns or neighbourhoods, opening up ways for the company to partner with local events.

The game is fun but can be annoying to those who aren’t used to their iPhone beeping at random intervals. Whilst we get this is the idea of the app itself, we soon found ourselves looking for the option to turn off the notifications so that it didn’t annoy us whilst we were trying to work.

If you have a little time on your hands or can drop what you are doing at a moments notice, Appysnap could be the perfect fun app that has you competing against others to win some pretty impressive prizes.