Netninja.com released the ARG Tools iPhone app this week—a well thought-out collection of tools, resources, and links for alternate reality gamers of all levels. Included in this free app are helpful interactive tools for solving substitution ciphers, base64 encoding, Vignère ciphers, and much more. The homegrown app also features cheat sheets for other reference materials, such as English word frequencies.
While this might seem intimidating, newcomers to ARGs can really benefit from the informative panels explaining many of the interactive tools. Puppetmasters may find many of the utilities, such as the countdown timer decoder, useful for creating and running ARGs.
According to developer Brian Enigma’s blog, ARG Tools is “a bit of a niche utility, aimed mainly toward puzzle solvers and ARG players, specifically with an eye toward live events”—the native iPhone app can be run offline once installed, except for the Google search bar and pre-built links leading to key ARG community and news resources.
Download ARG Tools in the iTunes Store. No iPhone? Check out netninja.com for some great low-fi gaming resources, like a one-page wiki markup language cheat sheet and an Emergency ARG Pocket Reference.  Some of these tools are printouts that fit in your pocket. (You have those, right?)