It’s that time of year again, as Google has just announced its nominees for its best Play Store games and apps of 2017. The contenders were broken out over 12 categories, and had to adhere to a set criteria for consideration. All of the apps in the running have high user ratings, achieve Google’s marks for technical performance, and have received an update or been launched since April of last year.
The categories span everything from Standout Indie Game to Best Accessibility Experience and Best Social Impact. Headlining the list are the nominees for Best App and Best Game.
For Best App, it’s a battle between public transit utility Citymapper, motivation coach Fabulous, language learning app Memrise, finance manager Money Lover, and GoPro’s video editor Quik. Citymapper has been recognized by New York’s Metropolitan Transit Authority and The New York Times, and was also listed as one of Google’s favorite apps of 2016. Fabulous previously won Google’s Material Design award for Most Charming Engagement.
The five apps up for Best Game are last summer’s augmented reality phenomenon Pokémon Go, Nintendo’s recently released strategy RPG Fire Emblem Heroes, massively multiplayer online RPG Lineage II Revolution (which is gearing up for a worldwide debut after a successful launch in South Korea), visual novel hub Choices, and action game Tranformers: Forged to Fight. All of these titles are free to play with in-app purchases, and some feature ads.
There are far more nominees up for top honors, including really useful tools like IFTTT that can automate a variety of tasks and integrate with hundreds of web-based services. There are also apps that can do enormous good, like ShareTheMeal, which allows users to feed a child in need with a single tap. You can see the full list in Google’s blog post. The winners will be announced at Google I/O, which is set to kick off on May 17.
