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Click the image above to watch the video on YouTube!
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Android Apps you shouldn't miss this week
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Unhappy Ever After RPG
Unhappy Ever After RPG was originally funded on Kickstarter that boasts over 20 hours of game play and more!
Download from Google Play
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The Frostrune
The Frostrune is a first-person adventure game that features point-and-click mechanics and a deep story!
Download from Google Play
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Pixbar
Pixbar is an Android customization app that lets you make your soft keys like the Google Pixel without root!
Download from Google Play
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Energy Bar
Energy Bar is another Android customization app. It allows you to turn your status bar into a battery meter!
Download from Google Play
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The Escapists
The Escapists is a game about prison. You'll be crafting, stealing, and brawling your way through the game until you can eventually escape. You'll get to explore many ways to escape from prison and you have to find the one that works best for you.
Download from Google Play
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Headlines this week
- One of the bigger announcements at MWC 2017 was the Nokia 3310. It's a remake of the famous phone known for its absurd battery life and durability. It also comes with a revamped version of the popular Snake game. As it turns out, you can play it without buying the 3310. Facebook Messenger has the game built into the app and you can play it whenever you want. Simply launch the app, tap the controller icon, find it, and play. That's kind of cool.
- Google announced that Google Assistant will be coming to all devices running Marshmallow and Nougat. The good news is that you won't have to wait long. The update will be coming through Google Play Services and it should be rolling out right now. The first stage of rollouts are going to the United States, Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom, and Germany. Other countries and languages will have to wait for rollouts later this year.
- Researches have found that 132 Android apps are carrying Windows malware. What makes that interesting is that Windows malware can't do jack or squat on the Android platform. It gets weirder. The developers had no idea that the malware was there. The malware finds HTML pages and injects the malware into them automatically, even if they're in an Android app. That means the malware was on their computer and not intentionally added to the apps.
- Google Spaces will be shutting down on April 17th. The messaging app was made as an offshoot of Google+. People could join a space and everyone could chat about the specific topic of that space. However, it never took off and soon it won't exist anymore. This is being heralded as a good move by most because Google has a ton of messaging apps and this one didn't bring anything worthwhile to the table.
- Google is currently implementing new features for game developers. For starters, they are tweaking their algorithms to help indie game developers get more attention. Additionally, there are new promotional tools such as the ability to run one's game on sale for free temporarily. The test runs have been fairly positive, with Google announcing that some app developers were seeing three to 20 times the engagement as they were before.
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Additional app releases, announcements, and deals
- Epic Games has officially begun pre-registration for their upcoming game, Battle Breakers.
- Epic Games is also doing some wicked awesome stuff with augmented reality!
- Google has launched Google Meet, a Hangouts-based video app that's aimed at enterprise use.
- Google has announced Virtual Rabbids and three other games coming to Google Daydream!
- The popular Zombie Gunship game is getting a sequel. It's about time because the last one is from 2011. The new game will follow the basic principles of the original. Of course, it'll have some new mechanics to make things fun. It'll be called Zombie Gunship Survival and we assume it'll be a free-to-play title. It should be out sometime in May.
- Niantic announced that they would be bringing more large updates to Pokemon Go in 2017. The future updates will include more Pokemon, new game play features, and more. The game play features that have been confirmed include trading Pokemon, PvP combat, a new gym battle system, and some smaller stuff. The updates should roll out over the course of the year. They also announced a revamp for Ingress at MCW 2017. That should be fun!
- Mozilla has purchased Pocket. For those who don't know, Pocket is an app that lets you save stuff for you to read later. Pocket had extensions on most browsers along with mobile apps. The terms of the deal were not made public. However, Pocket has about 22 million users so we imagine that Mozilla paid a pretty penny. For now, Pocket will continue to exist in its current form.
- Google officially announced YouTube TV this week. It's an Internet based cable network similar to Sling TV, PlayStation Vue, and DirecTV Now. It'll include dozens of cable channels, local sports networks, and other stuff. One of the big features is an unlimited, cloud-based DVR. Of course, you'll have access to YouTube Red Original content as well from the app. Also, the company announced that people check out over one billion hours of videos per day. That's impressive.
- Khronos, the company behind the Vulkan API, announced their latest project this week. It'll be called OpenXR and its goal is to make the development of virtual reality games easier on mobile. There are two parts to the process. It's early in its development, but we have high hopes that it could make virtual reality gaming much better. We should be hearing more before the end of 2017.
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