Posted by Patricia Correa, Director, Developer Marketing
We just wrapped up the Indie Games Showcase in Europe, Japan & South Korea! Back in March we started our search for some of the newest and most creative indie titles from these regions. The search culminated last week with the celebration of indie developers at events in London, Tokyo, and Seoul, and the selection of the winners from our finalists. Developers from 12 countries traveled to the events and showcased their games to the audience of gamers, industry experts, YouTube creators, and journalists.
The games were on show to the public, who spent several 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 big prizes in front of the jury.
Now, we are happy to announce the winners from each region! They will be returning home with a prize package that includes promotions on the Google Play Store, consultations with Google teams, Google hardware, and more.
We also want to take this opportunity to congratulate all the other finalists and developers who entered the competition this year. We are impressed by your creativity and passion, and hope you will continue to create amazing experiences for players worldwide.
G30 - A Memory Maze by Ivan Kovalov (Russia)
Ordia by Loju (United Kingdom)
Photographs by EightyEight Games (United Kingdom)
The other finalists as selected by audience and Google Play votes were:
#DRIVE by Pixel Perfect Dude (Poland)
Fly THIS! By Northplay (Denmark)
Golf Peaks by Afterburn (Poland)
Rest in Pieces by Itatake (Sweden)
see/saw by Kamibox (Germany)
STAP by Overhead Game Studio (United Kingdom)
Tesla vs. Lovecraft by 10tons (Finland)
Infection - 感染 - by CanvasSoft
MeltLand by 個人
Bear's Restaurant by 個人
Lunch Time Fish by SoftFunk HULABREAKS
ReversEstory by 個人
Kamiori - カミオリ by TeamOrigami
キグルミキノコ Q-bit -第一章- by 個人
クマムシさん惑星 ミクロの地球最強伝説 by Ars Edutainment
Girl x Sun - Terasene - Tower defence & Novel game by SleepingMuseum
Persephone by Momo-pi
ROOMS: The Toymaker's Mansion by HandMade Game
Seoul2033: Backer by Banjiha Games
Cartoon Craft by Studio NAP
Hexonia by Togglegear
Hexagon Dungeon by Bleor Games
7Days - Decide your story by Buff Studio
WhamBam Warriors by DrukHigh
Onslot Car by Wondersquad
Maze Cube by IAMABOY
언노운 나이츠 by teamarex
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Posted by Patricia Correa, Director, Platforms & Ecosystems Developer Marketing
Back in March we opened submissions for the Indie Games Showcase, an international competition for games studios from Europe*, South Korea, and Japan who are constantly pushing the boundaries of storytelling, visual excellence, and creativity in mobile.
We were once again impressed by the diversity and creativity that the indie community is bringing to mobile, and we’re happy to announce the 20 finalists.
Check out the local websites to learn more about the finalists and the events.
AntVentor by LoopyMood (Ukraine)
CHUCHEL by Amanita Design (Czech Republic)
Fobia by Tapteek (Russia)
Gold Peaks by Afterburn (Poland)
Grayland by 1DER Entertainment (Slovakia)
Hexologic by MythicOwl (Poland)
Lucid Dream Adventure by Dali Games (Poland)
OCO by SPECTRUM48 (United Kingdom)
Peep by Taw (Russia)
Returner Zhero by Fantastic, yes (Denmark)
Tiny Room Stories: Town Mystery by Kiary games (Russia)
ALTER EGO by 株式会社カラメルカラム
Jumpion - Make a two-step jump ! by Comgate
SumoRoll - Road to the Yokozuna by Studio Kingmo
Escape Game: The Little Prince by 株式会社 Jammsworks
ゴリラ！ゴリラ！ゴリラ！by Gang Gorilla Games
タシテケス by 個人
Destination: Dragons! by GAME GABURI
Cute cat's cake shop by 個人
Hamcorollin' by illuCalab.
Food Truck Pup: Cooking Chef by 合同会社ゲームスタート
다크타운 - 온라인 by 초콜릿소프트
Bad 2 Bad: Extinction by Dawinstone
셧더펑 : 슈팅액션 by Take Five Games
Catch Idle by HalftimeStudio
Mahjong - Magic Fantasy by Aquagamez
Road to Valor: World War II by Dreamotion Inc.
Rhythm Star: Music Adventure by Anbsoft
Super Jelly Pop by STARMONSTER
UNLINK Daily Puzzle by Supershock
몬스터파크 온라인 by OVENCODE
We will welcome all finalists at events in London, Seoul, and Tokyo, where they will showcase their games to an audience of players, press and industry experts, for a chance to win the top prizes.
The events are open to the public, so if you would like to meet these games developers, try out their creations, and help choose the winners, sign up on the regional websites.
Congratulations to all finalists!
* The competition is open to developers from the following European countries and Israel: Austria, Belgium, Belarus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Romania, Russia, Slovakia, Spain, Sweden, Ukraine, and the United Kingdom (including Northern Ireland).
Google Play empowers game developers of all sizes to engage and delight people everywhere, and build successful businesses too. We are inspired by the passion and creativity we see from the indie games community, and, over the past few years, we've invested in and nurtured indie games developers around the world, helping them express their unique voice and bring ideas to life.
This year, we've put together several initiatives to help the indie community.
For indie developers who are constantly pushing the boundaries of storytelling, visual excellence, and creativity in mobile we are announcing today the Indie Games Showcase, an international competition for games studios from Europe*, South Korea and Japan. Those of you who meet the eligibility criteria (as outlined below) can enter your game for a chance to win several prizes, including:
How to enter the competition
If you're over 18 years old, based in one of the eligible countries, have 30 or less full time employees, and have published a new game on Google Play after 1 January 2018, you can enter your game. If you're planning on publishing a new game soon, you can also enter by submitting a private beta. Submissions close on May 6 2019. Check out all the details in the terms and conditions for each region. Enter now!
Last year we launched our first games accelerator for developers in Southeast Asia, India and Pakistan and saw great results. We are happy to announce that we are expanding the format to accept developers from select countries in the Middle East, Africa, and Latin America, with applications for the 2019 cohort opening soon. The Indie Games Accelerator is a 6 month intensive program for top games startups, powered by mentors from the gaming industry as well as Google experts, offering a comprehensive curriculum that covers all aspects of building a great game and company.
We will be hosting our annual Developer Day at the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco on Monday, March 18th. Join us for a full day of sessions covering tools and best practices to help build a successful mobile games business. We'll focus on game quality, effective monetization and growth strategies, and how to create, connect, and scale with Google. Sign up to stay up to date or join us via livestream.
We also want to engage with you in person with a series of events. We will be announcing them shortly, so please make sure to sign up to our newsletter to get notified about events and programs for indie developers.
Looking for tips on how to use various developer tools in the Play Console? Get free training through our e-learning program, the Academy for App Success. We even have a custom Play Console for game developers course to get a jump start on Google Play.
We look forward to seeing your amazing work and sharing your creativity with other developers, gamers and industry experts around the world. And don't forget to submit your game for a chance to get featured on Indie Corner on Google Play.
* The competition is open to developers from the following European countries: Austria, Belgium, Belarus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Israel, Italy, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Romania, Russia, Slovakia, Spain, Sweden, Ukraine, and the United Kingdom (including Northern Ireland).
Posted by Kacey Fahey, Developer Marketing, Google Play
We're excited to be part of the Game Developers Conference (GDC) 2019 in San Francisco. Join us on Monday, March 18th at the Google Mobile Developer Day, either in person or over live stream, for a full day of sessions covering tools and best practices to help build a successful mobile games business on Google Play. We'll focus on game quality, effective monetization and growth strategies, and how to create, connect, and scale with Google.
This year's sessions are focused on tips and tools to help your mobile game business succeed. Come hear our latest announcements and industry trends, as well as learnings from industry peers. We will hold a more technical session in the second half of the day, where we'll share ways to optimize your mobile game's performance for the best possible player experience.
Also, make sure to visit the Google booth from Wednesday March 20th until Friday March 22nd. Here, you will be able to interact with hands-on demos, attend talks in the theater, and get your questions answered by Google experts. We're bringing a big team and hope to see you there.
Learn more about Google's activities throughout the week of GDC and 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 18th. These events are part of the official Game Developers Conference and require a pass to attend.
Posted by Patricia Correa, Platforms & Ecosystems
Earlier this year we highlighted some of Google Play's milestones and commitments in supporting the 1M+ developers on the Play Store, as well as those of you working on Android apps and games and looking to launch and grow your business on our platforms. We have been inspired and humbled by the achievements of app and game developers, building experiences that delight and help people everywhere, as some stories highlighted in #IMakeApps.
We continue to focus on helping you grow thriving businesses and building tools and resources to help you reach and engage more users in more places, whilst ensuring a safe and secure ecosystem. Looking to 2019, we are excited about all the things to come and seeing more developers adopt new features and update to Android P.
In the meantime let's share some of the 2018 highlights on Google Play and Android:
Building for the future
Along with Android P we have continued to help the Android developer ecosystem, launching Android Jetpack, the latest Android Studio, and Kotlin support. Developers are also now able to add rich and dynamic UI templates with Slices in places such as Google Search and Assistant, APIs for new screens support, and much more. Discover the latest from Android 9, API Level 28.
Smaller apps have higher conversion rates and our research shows that a large app size is a key driver of uninstalls. At I/O we launched a new publishing format, the Android App Bundle, helping developers to deliver smaller and more efficient apps with a simplified release process, and with features on demand - saving on average 35% in download size! On devices using Android M and above, app bundles can reduce app size even further, by automatically supporting uncompressed native libraries, thereby eliminating duplication on devices.
You can build app bundles in the Android Studio 3.2 stable release and in Unity 2018.3 beta, and upload larger bundles with installed APK sizes of up to 500MB without using expansion files, through an early access feature soon to be available to all developers.
Richer experiences and discovery
Discovery of your apps and games is important, so we launched Google Play Instant and increased the size limit to 10MB to enable TRY NOW on the Play Store, and removed the URL requirement for Instant apps. Android Studio 3.3 beta release, lets you publish a single app bundle and classify it or a particular module to be instant enabled (without maintaining separate code).
For game developers, Unity introduced the Google Play Instant plug-in and instant app support is built into the new Cocos Creator. Our app pre-registration program, has seen nearly 250 million app pre-registrations, helping drive app downloads through richer discovery.
Optimizing for quality and performance
Android vitals are now more actionable, with a dashboard highlighting core vitals, peer benchmarks, start-up time and permission denials vitals, anomaly detection and alerts, and linking pre-launch reports - all so that you can better optimize and prioritize issues for improved quality and performance.
There are more opportunities to get feedback and fix issues before launch. The Google Play Console expanded the functionality of automated device testing with a pre-launch report for games, and the launch of the internal and closed test tracks lets you push your app to up to 100 internal testers, before releasing them to production.
Insights for your business, now and in the long term
Metrics are critical to optimize your business and we've added new customizable tools in the Play Console, with downloadable reports to help you evaluate core metrics. Including cumulative data, 30-day rolling averages, and roll-ups for different time periods to better match the cadence of your business.
You can now configure the statistics report to show how your instant apps are performing, analyze different dimensions and identify how many install the final app on their device. The acquisition report shows users discovery journey through to conversion - with average revenue per user and retention benchmarks against similar apps. You can also find the best performing search terms for your store listing with organic breakdown - helping to optimize efforts to grow and retain a valuable audience.
Increasingly developers are adopting subscriptions as their core monetization model. The dedicated new subscriptions center means you can easily change subscription prices, offer partial refunds for in-app products and subscriptions, and also make plan changes in Play Billing Library version 1.2. Learn how to keep subscribers engaged; users can pause plans, giving you more control with order management and the cancellation survey.
Discover how to use all the new features and best practices on the Academy for App Success, our interactive free e-learning platform, offering bite-sized courses that help you make the most of Play Console and improve your app quality.
Make sure you follow @googleplaydev and sign up to our newsletter to stay ahead of all our updates in 2019! We hope these features and tools will enable us to continue a successful partnership with you in the New Year - follow our countdown for a daily highlight. From all of us at Google Play - happy holidays.
Posted by Fei Ye, Software Engineer and Kazushi Nagayama, Ninja Spamologist
Google Play ratings and reviews are extremely important in helping users decide which apps to install. Unfortunately, fake and misleading reviews can undermine users' trust in those ratings. User trust is a top priority for us at Google Play, and we are continuously working to make sure that the ratings and reviews shown in our store are not being manipulated.
There are various ways in which ratings and reviews may violate our developer guidelines:
When we see these, we take action on the app itself, as well as the review or rating in question.
In 2018, the Google Play Trust & Safety teams deployed a system that combines human intelligence with machine learning to detect and enforce policy violations in ratings and reviews. A team of engineers and analysts closely monitor and study suspicious activities in Play's ratings and reviews, and improve the model's precision and recall on a regular basis. We also regularly ask skilled reviewers to check the decisions made by our models for quality assurance.
It's a big job. To give you a sense of the volume we manage, here are some numbers from a recent week:
Our team can do a lot, but we need your help to keep Google Play a safe and trusted place for apps and games.
If you're a developer, you can help us by doing the following:
Example of a violation: incentivized ratings is not allowed
If you're a user, you can follow these simple guidelines as well:
Finally, if you find bad ratings and reviews on Google Play, help us improve by sending your feedback! Users can mark the review as "Spam" and developers can submit feedback through the Play Console.
Tooltip to flag the review as Spam.
Thanks for helping us keep Google Play a safe and trusted place to discover some of the world's best apps and games.
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.
Here are a few of our favorite new games joining the collection.
See the full list of Android Excellence apps and games.
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
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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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!
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.
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!
Captain Tom Galactic Traveler
Picodongames
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
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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