Category: Games

Introducing new Android Excellence apps and games on Google Play

Posted on by Android Developers

Kacey Fahey, Developer Marketing, Google Play

Congratulations to the latest apps and games featured in the Android Excellence program on Google Play. As a reminder, these collections are refreshed every three months and recognize apps and games that set the bar for high quality, great user experience, and strong technical performance.

If you’re looking for some new apps, here are a few highlights.

  • Adobe Photoshop Lightroom CC: Capture, edit, and share your photos with the power of Lightroom on your mobile device. Use presets for quick and easy edits, or dive in with the advanced editing tools.
  • Seven – 7 Minute Workout Training Challenge: Use this app to fit seven minute workouts into your busy lifestyle. Grab your phone, or even your Wear OS device to work out anywhere and anytime. Keep it up to earn achievements and join the 7 Club for even more support.
  • SoloLearn: Learn to Code for Free: Learn one of many new coding languages by joining a community of millions. Tap in to the 24/7 peer support, or create your own lessons to become a community influencer.

Here are a few of our favorite new games joining the collection.

  • CodyCross: Crossword Puzzles: Try this game for a fun new style of crossword puzzles. Play for free on adventure mode or subscribe for special themed packs, varying difficulty levels and fresh content added weekly.
  • MARVEL Contest of Champions: Play with your favorite Marvel Super Heroes and Super Villians in iconic locations from the Marvel Universe. Assemble your team of champions to play through the exciting storyline and even build alliances with your friends.
  • Orbital 1: Test your skills in this real-time multiplayer game with beautiful 3D graphics. Collect and upgrade fighters and weapons to build out your perfect squad for quick battles and new daily quests.

See the full list of Android Excellence apps and games.

New Android Excellence apps New Android Excellence games
Adobe Photoshop Lightroom CC

Dashlane

Holstelworld

iCook

Keeper Password Manager

Keepsafe Photo Vault

Mobisystems OfficeSuite

PhotoGrid

Runtastic Results

Seven – 7 Minute Workout Training Challenge

SoloLearn: Learn to Code for Free

Tube Map

WPS Office

Angry Birds 2

Azur Lane アズールレーン

CodyCross

Into the Dead 2

Little Panda Restaurant

MARVEL Contest of Champions

Orbital 1

Rooms of Doom

Sky Dancer Run

Sling Kong

Soul Knight

Explore other great apps and games in the Editors’ Choice section on Google Play and discover best practices to help you build quality apps and games.

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Congratulations to the winners of the Google Play Indie Games Contest 2017 in Europe

Posted on by Android Developers

Posted by Adriana Puchianu, Developer Marketing Google Play

We have just wrapped up the second edition of the Google Play Indie Games Contest in Europe! The iconic Saatchi Gallery in London welcomed 20 developers, from 12 countries, who showcased their games to the audience of gamers, industry experts, and journalists.

The finalists’ games were on show to the public, who spent three hours trying out their games and voting for their favourites, alongside the Google Play team. The top 10 finalists were then selected, and went on to pitch their games, and compete for the big prizes in front of our jury.

Please join us in congratulating the winners! They will be bringing home a well-deserved diploma, along with a prize package that will help them reach more gamers worldwide; including premium placement on the Google Play Store, marketing campaigns of up to 100,000 EUR and influencer campaigns of up to 50,000 EUR, the latest Google hardware, tickets to Google I/O, and much more.

It’s really inspiring to see the excitement around this second edition, and great to see the new wave of indie games coming from Europe. We are already looking forward to playing the games that will be developed in 2018!

Check out the main winners and the other finalists on the Google Play Store!

Winner

Bury me, my love

Playdius

France

A reality-inspired interactive fiction designed for mobile phones. It tells the story of Nour, a Syrian woman trying to reach Europe in hope of a better life.

Runners up

Old Man’s Journey

Broken Rules Interactive Media GmbH

Austria

A story game about life’s precious moments, broken dreams, and changed plans.

Yellow

Bart Bonte

Belgium

A puzzle game for you! A love letter to a marvelous colour and to the little wonder called touchscreens. Warning: very yellow!

The other games that have made it into top 10 are:

Captain Tom Galactic Traveler

Picodongames

France

An open world platformer and space exploration game. Embark on an exploratory mission, discover planets, collect oxygen, play with gravity.

I Love Hue

Zut!

United Kingdom

A minimalist, ambient puzzle game influenced by mindfulness apps and abstract art. Players arrange shuffled mosaics of coloured tiles into perfectly ordered palettes.

Jodeo

Gamebra.in

Turkey

Jodeo is a 2D jelly critter. There’s something it’s curious about: what if 3D objects and 2D physics are in the same game? How can 2D objects interact with 3D objects?

Kami 2

State of Play

United Kingdom

The calming yet addictive puzzle game is back! With over 100 handcrafted puzzles, it takes you on a mind-twisting journey that combines logic and problem-solving.

Kenshō

FIFTYTWO

Russia

A tile sliding puzzle with a wonderful soundtrack. Mysterious things happen in a ruined room. Doors inside that room lead to different worlds and beautiful landscapes.

No More Buttons

Tommy Søreide Kjær

Norway

A hand-drawn platformer where the buttons are part of the environment.

The Big Journey

Catfishbox

Ukraine

Designed for kids and adults alike, this a beautiful, casual adventure. Tilt to roll around and explore a beautiful world with Mr. Whiskers.

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Join us for Google Developer Day at GDC 2018

Posted on by Android Developers

Posted by Kacey Fahey, Developer Marketing, Google Play

We’re hosting another Google Developer Day at this year’s Game Developers Conference (GDC) on Monday, March 19th.

Join us for a full day, where we’ll kick things off with a keynote to share our latest news for game developers, followed by three sessions focused on innovation & new platforms, pre-launch best practices, and strategies to improve performance post-launch. Each session will include mini-talks from different Google teams and developer partners sharing new tools, learnings and more.

We’ll also have a booth in Moscone South, Wednesday (March 21) through Friday (March 23), offering three days of additional talks from many Google teams and a chance for you to ask the experts any of your questions. Stop by to hear talks, meet experts, and try out exciting demos. These events are part of the official Game Developers Conference and require a pass to attend.

Learn more about Google’s activities throughout the week on our event site where you can sign up to stay informed. For those who can’t make it in person, join the live stream starting at 10am PST on Monday, March 19th.

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Meet the finalists of the Google Play Indie Games Contest in Europe

Posted on by Android Developers

Posted by Adriana Puchianu, Developer Marketing Google Play

Back in October we launched the 2nd edition of the Google Play Indie
Games Contest in Europe, with the aim to identify, showcase and reward indie
gaming talent from more than 30 countries. We were amazed by the innovation and
creativity that indie developers from the region have to offer.

Selecting just 20 finalists has once again been a huge challenge. We had a lot
of fun playing the games that will go on to showcase at the Saatchi
Gallery on February 13th in London. Without further ado, we are happy
to announce the Top 20 finalists of this year’s edition. Congratulations to the
finalists and thanks to everyone else who has entered the contest.

A
Planet of Mine

Tuesday Quest

France

Bridge
Constructor Portal

ClockStone Softwareentwicklung GmbH

Austria

Bury
me, my Love

Playdius

France

Captain
Tom Galactic Traveler

Picodongames

France

Core

FURYJAM

Russia

Flat
Pack

Nitrome

United Kingdom

Fern
Flower

Macaque

Poland

I
Love Hue

Zut!

United Kingdom

Jodeo

Gamebra.in

Turkey

Kami
2

State of Play

United Kingdom

Kenshō

FIFTYTWO

Russia

No
More Buttons

Tommy Søreide Kjær

Norway

Old
Man’s Journey

Broken Rules Interactive Media GmbH

Austria

Radium 2 | Ra²

Developster

Germany

The
Big Journey

Catfishbox

Ukraine

The
House of Da Vinci

Blue Brain Games, s.r.o.

Slovakia

The
Office Quest

11Sheep

Israel

Unbalance

TVEE

Turkey

Undervault

Andriy Bychkovskyi

Ukraine

yellow

Bart Bonte

Belgium

Check out the prizes

All the 20 finalists are getting:

  • A paid trip to London to showcase their game at the Final held at Saatchi
    Gallery
  • Inclusion of their game on a promotional billboard in London for 1 month
  • Inclusion of their game in a dedicated Indie Games Contest collection on the
    Indie Corner for one month in more than 40 countries across EMEA
  • Two (2) tickets to attend a 2018 Playtime event, an invitation-only event
    for top apps and games developers on Google Play
  • One (1) Pixel 2 device

They will also have the chance to win more
prizes at the final event.

Join the Google Play team and the finalists at the final event:

Anyone can now register
to attend the final
showcase event for free at the Saatchi Gallery in London on 13
February 2018. Come and play some great games and have fun with indie
developers, industry experts, and the Google Play team.


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Google and Ideas United announce Infinite Deviation: Games winners

Posted on by Android Developers

Posted by Kate Brennan and Mathilde Cohen Solal, Google Play and Daraiha Greene, CS in Media

Google Play is committed to empowering new and existing voices in gaming. Earlier this year, we hosted the Indie Games Festival and sponsored the Girls Make Games summer camp. We also announced a collaboration between Infinite Deviation and Google Play.

Infinite Deviation is an initiative created by Google Computer Science (CS) in Media and Ideas United in order to tackle issues of representation in computer science. The collaboration between Google Play and Ideas United brought the Infinite Deviation program to gaming, called Infinite Deviation: Games. The program invited game designers from all backgrounds to pitch an original mobile game concept that resonates with underrepresented audiences.

Today we are excited to announce the three teams selected for the Infinite Deviation: Games development program.

A select panel of industry experts reviewed applications and chose the top three ideas. The judging panel included Colleen Macklin (Founder and Co-Director, PETLab), Jeremy Vanhoozer (Senior Creative Director, Plants vs Zombies), Molly Proffitt (CEO, Ker-Chunk Games), Shirin Laor-Raz Salemnia (Founder and CEO, PlayWerks), and Sarah Thomson (Global BD Lead, Indies, Google). These judges scored and delivered personal feedback for each submission, with the three highest scoring games moving into further development.

Here’s a closer look at the three games we’ll be funding and supporting development over the next six months:

Historic Gay Bar Tycoon

Mo Cohen & Maria Del Castillo Infantas – Queermo Games

Historic Gay Bar Tycoon (name pending) starts you off with a brand new queer bar in the 1920s. This game explores the role bars played in LGBT history. Will your bar survive revolutions, epidemics, and the rise of dating apps?

Queermo Games is pretty much what it sounds like: a scrappy and small indie game developing team just trying to make more LGBT games. Conveniently, they are also next door neighbors. Maria is a queer Latina who handles the art and the music, and Mo is a non-binary Jewish queer who tackles the programming and writing. Together, they also work on another longer-term project called Queer Quest with their buddy Hagen.

Burn Ban

Harrison Barton & Morgan Rowe – Pride Interactive

Burn Ban is an interactive visual novel in which you assume the role of Twig, a mentally ill queer girl. After showing destructive tendencies to cope with the death of a close friend, she is sent to Camp Sisquoc, a summer retreat for misguided students. After attending the camp for a few days, her dead friend’s online social media page mysteriously starts posting again, and Twig and friends are set with determining the mystery behind the posts.

Pride Interactive is currently made up of two developers, Harrison Barton and Morgan Rowe. Pride Interactive was started as a student game team, and is now continuing on to develop independent projects. Pride Interactive endeavors to further their mission of creating a more diverse environment in the industry through games that deal with serious themes, and diverse character driven narratives.

Ghost in the Graveyard

Adnan Agha, Vivian Allum, and Armand Silvani – Ghost Stories

Ghost in the Graveyard is a story-driven mobile mystery game where you snoop through your missing brother’s old phone to try and find him. “Can you find a missing person when all you have is their phone?”

Ghost Stories is a three member team from NYC with a mission to create genuine and unique experiences that connect with players. The team consists of Vivian, the lead designer and programmer, Armand, the artist and writer, and Adnan, the programmer and resident ghost. They’ve previously published a school project to the Xbox One and are thrilled to be able to work with Infinite Deviation to publish to Google Play.

You can find more information about the program at InfiniteDeviation.com/Games. Congratulations to the three winners and thanks to all the people who have entered the competition for their continuous work to push the boundaries of gaming design and providing a unique voice to the industry.

Build Your IT Super Powers with Technical Services at Cisco Live Cancun 2017

Posted on by Denise Cox

Are you ready to hone your IT super powers? Meet the Technical Services team at Cisco Live Cancun to keep your networks humming by building on product support with the new high-value services.

Playtime 2017: Find success on Google Play and grow your business with new Play Console features

Posted on by Android Developers

Posted by Vineet Buch, Director of Product Management, Google Play Apps & Games

Today we kicked off our annual global Playtime series with back-to-back events in Berlin and San Francisco. Over the next month, we’ll be hearing from many app and game developers in cities around the world. It has been an amazing 2017 for developers on Google Play, there are now more than 8 billion new installs per month globally.
To help you continue to take advantage of this opportunity, we’re announcing innovations on Google Play and new features in the Play Console. Follow us on Medium where presenters will be posting their strategies, best practices, and examples to help you achieve your business objectives. As Google Play continues to grow rapidly, we want to help people understand our business. That’s why we’re also publishing the State of Play 2017 report that will be updated annually to help you stay informed about our progress and how we’re helping developers succeed.
Apps and games on Google Play bring your devices to life, whether they’re phones and tablets, Wear devices, TVs, Daydream, or Chromebooks like the new Google Pixelbook. We’re making it even easier for people to discover and re-engage with great content on the Play Store.

Recognizing the best

We’re investing in curation and editorial to showcase the highest quality apps and games we love. The revamped Editors’ Choice is now live in 17 countries and Android Excellence recently welcomed new apps and games. We also continue to celebrate and support indie games, recently announcing winners of the Indie Games Festival in San Francisco and opening the second Indie Games Contest in Europe for nominations.

Discovering great games

We’ve launched an improved home for games with trailers and screenshots of gameplay and two new browse destinations are coming soon, ‘New’ (for upcoming and trending games) and ‘Premium’ (for paid games).

Going beyond installs

We’re showing reminders to try games you’ve recently installed and we’re expanding our successful ‘live operations’ banners on the Play Store, telling you about major in-game events in popular games you’ve got on your device. We’re also excited to integrate Android Instant Apps with a ‘Try Now‘ button on store listings. With a single tap, people can jump right into the app experience without installing.

The new games experience on Google Play
The Google Play Console offers tools which help you and your team members at every step of an app’s lifecycle. Use the Play Console to improve app quality, manage releases with confidence, and increase business performance.

Focus on quality

Android vitals were introduced at I/O 2017 and already 65% of top developers are using the dashboard to understand their app’s performance. We’re adding five new Android vitals and increasing device coverage to help you address issues relating to battery consumption, crashes, and render time. Better performing apps are favored by Google Play’s search and discovery algorithms.
We’re improving pre-launch reports and enabling them for all developers with no need to opt-in. When you upload an alpha or beta APK, we’ll automatically install and test your app on physical, popular devices powered by Firebase Test Lab. The report will tell you about crashes, display issues, security vulnerabilities, and now, performance issues encountered.
When you install a new app, you expect it to open and perform normally. To ensure people installing apps and games from Google Play have a positive experience and developers benefit from being part of a trusted ecosystem, we are introducing a policy to disallow apps which consistently exhibit broken experiences on the majority of devices such as​ crashing,​ closing,​ ​freezing,​ ​or​ ​otherwise​ ​functioning​ ​abnormally. Learn more in the policy center.

Release with confidence

Beta testing lets trusted users try your app or game before it goes to production so you can iterate on your ideas and gather feedback. You can now target alpha and beta tests to specific countries. This allows you to, for example, beta test in a country you’re about to launch in, while people in other countries receive your production app. We’ll be bringing country-targeting to staged rollouts soon.
We’ve also made improvements to the device catalog. Over 66% of top developers are using the catalog to ensure they provide a great user experience on the widest range of devices. You can now save device searches and see why a specific device doesn’t support your app. Navigate to the device catalog and review the terms of service to get started.

Grow your subscriptions business

At I/O 2017 we announced that both the number of subscribers on Play and the subscriptions business revenue doubled in the preceding year. We’re making it easier to setup and manage your subscription service with the Play Billing Library and, soon, new test instruments to simplify testing your flows for successful and unsuccessful payments.
We’re helping you acquire and retain more subscribers. You can offer shorter free trials, at a minimum of three days, and we will now enforce one free trial at the app level to reduce the potential for abuse. You can opt-in to receive notifications when someone cancels their subscription and we’re making it easier for people to restore a canceled subscription. Account hold is now generally available, where you can block access to your service while we get a user to fix a renewal payment issue. Finally, from January 2018 we’re also updating our transaction fee for subscribers who are retained for more than 12 months.

Announcing the Google Play Security Reward Program

At Google, we have long enjoyed a close relationship with the security research community. Today we’re introducing the Google Play Security Reward Program to incentivize security research into popular Android apps, including Google’s own apps. The program will help us find vulnerabilities and notify developers via security recommendations on how to fix them. We hope to bring the success we have with our other reward programs, and we invite developers and the research community to work together with us on proactively improving Google Play ecosystem’s security.

Stay up to date with Google Play news and tips

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Google and Ideas United Launch Program to Support Inclusivity in Game Design

Posted on by Android Developers


Posted by Daraiha Greene, CS Education in Media Program Manager, Multicultural
Strategy, and Kate Brennan and Mathilde Cohen Solal, Google Play

Today, we are thrilled to announce Infinite Deviation: Games. Infinite Deviation is an
initiative created by Google Computer Science (CS) in Media and Ideas United in order to
tackle issues of representation by bringing creativity and computer science
together in unexpected ways — ensuring that representations of computer
scientists are inclusive of women, people of color, the LGBTQIA+ community,
people with disabilities, and other underrepresented groups. Last year, Infinite
Deviation produced a series of narrative
short films to dispel stereotypes in computer science and is excited to
collaborate with Google Play to bring the Infinite Deviation program to gaming.

Currently only 23%
of people in the gaming industry identify as women and only 3%
of game developers are African-American. From ensuring women are represented
in video
games to giving young girls the chance to create
their own games, Google Play is committed to bringing new, diverse voices to
gaming. The program gives game designers from all backgrounds the chance to
pitch an original mobile game concept and have it developed, published, and
promoted in partnership with Google Play. Applicants can submit their mobile
game concepts until October 9.

The top three ideas will be chosen by a panel of industry experts and designers
will receive the resources and support they need to bring their games to life on
Google Play. Games will be judged on creativity and innovation, as well as their
ability to tell original stories that resonate with underrepresented audiences.

Participants must have less than two years of professional game design
experience in order to be eligible. For more information on the program,
including how to apply, you can visit InfiniteDeviation.com.

By promoting original games that resonate with underrepresented audiences, we
hope the program creates more favorable perceptions of computer science, bust
biases, and nurture acceptance through an activity many enjoy.

Playdemic drives user engagement and revenue with live game operations on Google Play

Posted on by Android Developers

Posted by Adriana Puchianu, Developer Marketing, Google Play

Based in the UK, Playdemic is a free-to-play mobile games developer. Their leading game Golf Clash is designed to provide a short and fun, competitive experience. It uses a simple and accessible game mechanics based on one-thumb gaming which has generated substantial user engagement, with an average of 44 minutes played over three sessions a day. Golf Clash is now played by more than 1.5 million players every day whilst the average revenue per user is equal to other platforms.

Watch Paul Gouge, CEO & Co-founder, and Gareth Jones, Head of Production, discuss how Playdemic uses live game operations (“live ops”) to continuously engage players and grow their business on Google Play. Live ops are also referred to as “running games as a service”; they include the strategic distribution of content and interactions with players that are limited in time and are designed to increase engagement and monetization.

Watch more developer stories and learn about other features and best practices you can use to succeed on Google Play with the updated Playbook app.

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