Android is the biggest and a leading OS platform on which various mobile applications are developed for diverse industries and all business verticals. Android game development is an intricate process and involves many stages. Thus, It has been saddling the developers with myriad challenges on every step of its way but it also fascinates them to craft creative and immersive games.

An analysis made by Statista gave information on the number of available gaming apps in the Google Play app store. As of September 2020, there were three million forty thousand apps on Google Play Store and approximately three hundred eighty five thousand five hundred and fifty one of them were mobile gaming apps that is a 5.6 percent increase compared to the previous quarter. 

With 2020, we witnessed the pandemic, the lockdown, and a time when people were working from home, staying at home, maintaining social distancing, and to curb boredom, they turned to gaming and other entertainment sources. This had a lashing impact on the popularity and growth of the gaming industry in all positive ways. Nevertheless, the developers have to face intimidating challenges in some or the other ways. Let’s talk about a few of them here.

1. Understanding the client’s perspective comes as a challenge for many developers. Providers of game development services try to understand the client’s requirement and deliver it at their best. This becomes difficult at times when some clients themselves are unsure about what they want.

2. With every year Google releasing a new version of Android makes it tough for developers to design apps that support the features of the latest versions of the Android operating system. Thus, making the adoption rate of the latest android versions slow.

3. Customer retention is indispensable for any game or app. Users landing on your game or app is fine but what if they leave and do not return. What’s the point of such customer engagement? Effective gamer engagement is when the gamers find a game interesting and engaging so they return to the game. The developers have to understand the reasons that make the gamers want to leave and work towards giving them reasons to stay.

Bugs, lack of gamification, complicated interface, better alternatives, etc. are the most probable reasons for withdrawal. Maintenance of the game by fixing bugs, improving load time, and launching new updates of the game with new levels, characters, design, elements, etc. has to be taken care of to keep the excitement going in the game. The user reviews can serve as guiding stones for obviating bugs and implementing ideas.

4. Marketing presents your game in their most valuable form to the audience. Having an Inadequate marketing budget when you have oodles of ideas and plans to execute can be discouraging. We know even if your game is the best, it would make you no money if no one plays it. Some of the most interesting games have failed due to bad marketing strategies. And, marketing, branding, and promotion with a good budget is a requirement to make any game go viral and acquire gamers.

5. Other than that, optimizing a game's title and description on the search engines is a task. To popularize a game online, it is absolutely necessary for a game to position as the first few results in the search engine. Press releases are one way to make gamers aware of the new game in the market. App Indexing by Google lets the app’s content or the game’s content appear in the search results in Chrome on mobile devices. These strategies can help obtain more downloads and new users for your game in order to establish a community. Customer loyalty must be promoted via gamification, notifications, rewards or the like, to get the users to try your game and these act as good reasons for gamers to return to the game.

6. Every user has millions of options of Android games on Google Play Store, most are free and some are paid. This makes it difficult for developers to make a game that stands out from the rest and attain more downloads. This is where app store optimization strategy plays a role in enhancing a games visibility. This strategy includes choosing the right name, a unique game icon, using the right keywords in the game’s description, with high quality pictures and videos for promotion. Aggressive promotion of the game can really make or break the deal for any game.

7. Android has a staggering global market presence and this makes it susceptible to security attacks. These security issues are fixed by the security updates released by Google but the other security problems that arise due to the changes made to stock android are not addressed by Google updates. It is crucial to protect the game and the user data on it and hence the developers have to keep in mind to build a game that has strong security and advanced encryption mechanism. Every game requires players to provide their information and it is the responsibility of the game development company to ensure the security of that information and data.

8. Any project without research and analysis will be incomplete with faults and loopholes. Hence, even though it is difficult for a game developer to produce a well-researched game, it is unquestionably necessary to make an intuitive and user-friendly game after good research so that it reaches maximum users.

9. Android gives us a variety of device ratios varying from 4:3 to 16:9. Then, the resolution for Android and iOS are very different from each other. Thus, cross-platform developers face the challenge to provide the same user experience to every user at different screen size devices, resolutions and aspect ratios.

Content scaling ensures that the game logic and mechanics are equal on different devices, so design your game first for the lowest resolution (called the logical resolution) that you want to support, and then scale it up as a whole on larger resolutions so that it perfectly fits in the device screen. Here, when the screen is scaled up there is a chance of images getting blurry. As for the blurred out images are concerned, big images could be used and effectively scaled down to lower resolution devices. This is called smart asset selection. In this case, a lot of memory is wasted and running out of it could be an issue so it is preferred to load a different version of the image, depending on the size that’s required for the current device.

10. It is arduous for a developer to make a game that truly fulfills its motive and is not complicated to understand and play. This might happen when there’s overspill of ideas and features in a game (Feature creep) as the focus gets veered. To avoid this, launching a game in phases is something that can help. And, beta release will assist in getting feedback that can be used to overcome the drawbacks of the game and ensuring that the core essence of the game is not lost and the experience for the gamer is user-friendly. 

With this in mind, Logic Simplified provides android game development services and helps clients create innovative android games and overcome emerging challenges and security threats. Our team understands that when an Android game is developed, it is crucial that it anticipates and supports different possible player experiences, and increases gameplay flexibility to reach maximum gamers. Game development is an intimidating task and with new innovations happening everyday, it demands time, money, patience, and the zeal to combat challenges. If you’re looking to hire the right team of game app developers for your game idea, Contact us or email at enquiry@logicsimplified.com and we will help you in the best possible way.

Source: Vexxhost.com

With compelling hardware and advanced tools available today in the market, mobile game development is growing by leaps and bounds and so is the user engagement for video games. That’s how choosing the right tools, engines and platforms for the game becomes essential and helps build breathtaking entertainment (games). Gameplay and storyline with suitable engine, graphic, and development tools are important too. Having that in mind, Android supports all sorts of creativity and innovation that app developers want to add to their games. 

Unlike the old days, the present is about experimenting with disparate technologies - Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, Augmented reality, and others. Undoubtedly, these ingenuities have redefined a myriad of modern industries and the gaming industry is no exception.  

All that goes into building a game for today’s gamers

Ease of availability and accessibility can work really well for a product in the market. And, in case of Android games, its compatibility with different platforms works in its favour by increasing the spectrum of market reach and the user-experience for such games. Adding to that, the production of cross-platform games is also cost-effective. Despite that, the game designers have to ensure that the look and feel of the game is the same across various platforms.   

As for Virtual reality? The 3D graphics, multi projected environments, 360 degree view contributes to providing the players and immersive gameplay. With VR, players find the power to experience and manipulate the virtual gaming environment using VR accessories and devices like sensor-equipped gloves, VR gaming headsets and goggles, hand controllers, gloves, and more. The VR headsets give the player an impression of being somewhere else by blocking out the surrounding. Similarly, different VR accessories add value to the game in their own way. 

Unlike VR, Augmented reality does not replace a vision but adds to it with 2D and 3D model support, motion detection, and an advanced vision. AR devices overlay images over what a person is already looking at and builds experiences using the surroundings. The games even change accordingly to fit the space. AR mixes real world with the virtual and lets players interact personally with the digital environment. It is capable of producing endless possibilities, creative  games, and new innovations in gaming with huge benefits. With 3D tracking, geolocation, smart glasses support, and more, AR is growing and bringing extraordinary Android games for us.

It’s been a day or two since the news came out of Facebook rolling out a cloud gaming service. However, it’s not the first to come up with this idea but definitely the first one to offer this service for free.

There is a speedy growth in the number of mobile gamers which draws our attention towards the importance of integrating cloud computing services into Android mobile gaming (Cloud gaming). With digital media, users are looking to keep security issues in check and Cloud provides just that. It saves and protects the gamer’s data and progress in a game that is backed up with industrial security standards that takes care of all security concerns by blocking external attacks and hackers. It contributes to creating valuable innovations for an enriched gaming experience. That’s not it, better security, easy access to a library of interactive entertainment from anywhere and on any device, and increased compatibility are something it assures. It keeps pace with the expectations of today's users. Reduced cost is another benefit that comes along Cloud computing. It allows gaming companies to scale up or down as per their needs so that people only pay for resources that they need and use.

Reports say that it’s estimated that the number of active IoT devices will surpass 30.73 billion in 2020 and by 2025, there will be 152,200 IoT devices connecting to the internet per minute.

Source: Data Prot

The developers have used the Internet of Things aggressively to make games enveloping and engaging than ever by connecting one another’s consoles. Times have changed since playing video games was a solitary activity to now it has become a social activity that people do together. The multiplayer modes in games and IoT have allowed players to connect along with their devices, to play and interact at the same time. Not only that but IoT also offers exceptional playability. IoT has hastened the development of mobile Android games and developers are using sensors, advanced software and hardware capabilities, cameras, accelerometers to make gaming seamless and enjoyable. Players have now been able to connect to not just the game but the other devices and platforms which is considered a next-level opportunity and a life-like experience.

According to Research and Markets, this casino gaming market is expected to grow at a CAGR of 10.16% between 2017 and 2021, and a large part of this growth will be largely due to the sheer popularity of casino and poker apps with general consumers.

Source: PR News Wire

There has been a big shift from real tables to online casino games. The online casino business has become most popular and has managed to engage a large section of the population. With the use of IoT devices, it has been able to provide the comfort to play from anywhere and at any time, and to track every aspect of the game for future improvisations.

Artificial Intelligence makes games smarter for today's gamers by making games more immersive, enhancing the overall visual experience with compelling and realistic graphics, characters, and environment. AI makes refined 3D visualization and interactive gaming possible. It makes games more advanced letting the gameplay adjust the difficulty levels according to the performance of the player. This way the gameplay adapts, observes and responds as per the player’s efficiency and skill set in a game. These adjustments by the game itself makes sure that the player doesn’t lose interest in the game and doesn't get bored. AI makes it possible for the game to learn the basic recognition and augmentations so that the non-player characters in the game can observe and learn. There are several other advanced cutting-edge AI applications that are put to use in the gaming world so that it influences the gamer’s experience in a favourable manner.

AI facilitates creation of computerized opponents for board games like chess, ludo, etc. in a way that people could feel that they are competing with real people. Behavioural decision trees based algorithm and pathfinding algorithm are other techniques that help AI in video games development think and make complex decisions. Game developers find these algorithms easy to use and understand and take these as something that has changed the way creative video games look and feel. Considering all of that, AI is still in its early days and has a long journey yet to cover to reach its true potential and revolutionize gaming.

Chatbots or virtual assistants - Android is the most popular and widely used gaming platform that is supported by smartphones, tablets, and other devices available in the market. Integration on chatbots and virtual assistants in Android devices provides the convenience of not having to quit an app or game to do something else. Without any interruptions being caused to you game, you can order food online, or run any other search on google, play or change music just by asking your virtual assistant.

Customer support is another user case of chatbots and even virtual assistants. They are available 24X7, and operate at a high speed and low cost. Gaming chatbots have also started to be used in messaging apps like Facebook, Whatsapp, Skype, etc. 

Chatbots gather data from conversations and game players which is utilized to build a strong gaming experience for gamers. This information is used to the advantage of improving the quality of the game to fulfill a player’s expectations. 

Looking ahead, being creative and original with your idea and giving the gamers something fresh that they might have not experienced before is what weighs. A good quality game that keeps up with the trending technologies and the growing  requirements of the players has no difficulty attracting large crowds towards it. 

Android app and game development has come a long way with advancement in technologies. Nevertheless, the game development companies are taking full leverage and putting these innovations to good use for an upgraded gaming experience. Technological advancements like 3D scanning and facial recognition for creating customized game avatars, voice controlled gaming for recognizing the user’s voice and controlling gameplay and other functions in the gaming system, gesture control for letting users employ the natural movements of their body to connect with the gaming device. The possibilities of experiments that the game developers can carry out by bringing games and technology together is limitless. 

Just to mention that Logic Simplified has been rated as one of the top gaming software development company on Selected Firms.

One such company that provides Android game development services in India is Logic Simplified which has a team of Android game app developers who are creative, efficient, and provide full-scale design and development services. They are curious and competent crafters who hold the urge to keep learning and strengthening their skills with the latest technologies and trends to provide their clients the best of them.

In fact a few decades ago, possibly no one would have ever thought that they would be able to order an outfit without leaving their house, buy home accessories, attend doctor’s appointments - pretty much everything one can do online using their smartphone. Working like a mini computer, the smartphone has made the world a smaller place. 

Majority of the world’s population carry out their digital activities by using smartphones. Generally, people spend almost 5 hours a day on their mobile devices. As many activities can be carried out on a digital platform to capture the attention of people, it is vital for every serious organisation to offer a mobile responsivity or compatible site. 

Many top companies are already doing this. They are creating platforms that cater to the needs of their customers. Similarly, evolution is taking place in the gaming industry as well. Gaming has moved from the living room to the washroom as the people always stay connected with their mobile devices. So, the online casino gaming industry should not be left out. The only way the game app developers can connect to them with more games is to make online casino games available on a mobile platform. Let’s see the important reasons why online casino portals should be compatible with smartphone devices. 

Increase in mobile traffic

Do you remember life without Android and iPhone devices? It is hard to imagine our life without these devices which are so essential in our today’s life. With the easy availability of budget-friendly mobile phones and internet traffic, there has been a rise in mobile traffic around the world. This offers mobile gamers access to their favorite online social casino games. 

Instead of putting on a headset or pop a disc into a mobile console, gaming allows the players to play the game anytime, anywhere. As of 2017, the number of mobile users has exceeded 2.3 billion worldwide. At present, around 66.50% of the world’s population users use a mobile device. By 2021, India is likely to have over 440 million smartphone users. With the rise in traffic, there has also been a rise of mobile gaming in India.

5G technology coming soon

Around 59% of the world population is already using the internet. But people who love online mobile games have a significant issue. If you have played online games before, you know why. Bad internet connection or areas which make your signal weak can wreck your experience. With faster networks like 5G technology, internet activities are set to increase. A game development company must be prepared for this. It will make the user experience faster, engaging and alluring. Also, players who love to play live casinos will be able to stream seamlessly and enjoy every aspect of the game.

Many people also think that the introduction of 5G will give a better use of VR in online casino games. With lower latency over 5G it allows a better VR experience. It is definitely going to be a big deal for mobile digital reality platforms as it will give more immersive and realistic gaming experience to the users. This technology also promises to consume less power, so that punters can enjoy their favorite games for a long time even without a large battery capacity.

Be more competitive

There are many casino websites that are already developing mobile responsivity or compatibility sites. Online casinos which are not yet available on smartphones are lagging. Despite special offers or bonuses, they offer to its players, most of the players will not sign up if it is not a mobile compatible site. So, if an online casino wants to maintain its value and outdo rivals must make a great mobile platform in the gaming industry for its players today.

Having mobile compatible websites also brings more exposure to the site and the opportunity to reach more audience. Mobile-friendliness or responsiveness also affects the search engine ranking as the responsivity helps the site to rank better on google. The higher the ranking on search engine results, the higher will be the amount of traffic, lead, and conversion.

Online casino portals that are on the right track

There are many casino portals that are already on the right track. The best example is Gamentio. It offers the best 3D online games that are 100% mobile-friendly. Thanks to their integrated HTML5 mobile game development feature. Apart from casino games it also hosts Gamentio Auctions. To place a bid, users can either purchase the coins or can earn by playing their favorite games on the site. Players can bid and win products at a fraction of the retail cost. Amazing, isn't it!

But that’s not all, Gamentio also offers a download app where you can play games like Poker, Rummy, Blackjack, etc. directly on the app, making an exciting gaming experience for the players. Not only seamless experience but many additional benefits are also given to them with the downloadable apps.

Another example is Zynga. They offer a casino app with a variety of options to choose from. In terms of mobile gaming experience, so far, no other online casino app has been able to outperform these two. 

A few years ago, possibly no one would have ever thought that they would be able to carry thousands of different types of table games or slots in their pocket. The significance of the gaming industry to social networking, culture, and entertainment cannot be understated. The word “entertainment industry” is no longer reserved for any film industry. This is because the gaming industry is now offering the most engaging and amazing forms of amusement to more than two billion people across the world.

If you have a desire to play slots or any table on the go and you have a smartphone, then nothing is stopping you from signing up on Gamentio. Enter into the world of mobile casinos with just a touch of your finger. Experience the real casino environment from the comfort of your home and start reaping the rewards of great entertainment.

According to Google,  the install conversion rate drop by 1% for every 6 MB expansion in an APK’s size. This results from users considering the size of the game app before installing it, how long it will take to download, and Internet connectivity issues still existing in many parts of the world. It’s no secret that an Android app without considerable downloads is as good as non-existent, which makes it paramount to hire Android game developers who also offer game optimizing services to reduce the app size and improve performance on various Android devices. 

Android Game Development: How to Reduce Game App Size

Unity game developers can use AssetBundle to use platform-specific non-code Assets such as Models, Textures, Prefabs, Audio clips, and even entire Scenes. Unity can load those non-code assets at runtime.  Unity packages the game in the engine and most of the game's assets are put into a single binary file. Android App Bundle is another great solution offered by Google to reduce the game app size. App Bundle allows Android game developers to build and optimize APKs for each device configuration, which results in a smaller app without the unused code and resources needed for other devices. For Android game apps more than 150 MB in size, Play Asset Delivery (PAD) is the best bet as it allows to replace APK Expansion Files, also known as OBBs, by publishing a single artefact on Play Store containing all the resources the game needs. Using PAD, developers can host and serve all asset packs on Google Play without requiring a third-party content delivery network (CDN) to get game resources to players. PAD asset packs consist of assets such as textures, shaders, and sounds, but no executable code. PAD also allows to customize how and when asset packs are installed based on three delivery modes: install-time, fast-follow, and on-demand.

Also read Why is Storyline in Android Video Game Development so Important?

Gameloft integrated PAD into Asphalt 8, Asphalt Xtreme, and Minion Rush. Both Asphalt 8 and Minion Rush leveraged fast-follow and on-demand delivery by replacing their custom CDN calls with calls to the PAD API. This helped not just reduce CDN costs, but also drastically increased the secondary downloads to start playing the game. As a result, the user-retention rate significantly improved, with 10% more new players than with their previous asset delivery system. A puzzle kids app from a US developer also saw a 21% reduction in crashes & Application Not Responding (ANR) errors after using Play Asset Delivery’s on-demand mode, which significantly helped improve the user experience.

However, Android App Bundle or Play Asset Delivery is not the only way to reduce an Android game app size, which brings me to discuss more ways to further reduce the game app size.

Different Optimizations to Reduce Android Game Size

Reduce the Size of APK’s Assets

Identify APK’s assets (images, audios and videos) that can be further resized or compressed and use high compression ratios, which is quite acceptable for games. You can reduce the image size by diluting the resolution and converting .jpg and .png images to .webp without compromising on the quality of the original images. If you’re using a texture much larger than the number of pixels that ultimately render on the screen, you’re simply not making the optimum use of space and GPU resources. You can use Android GPU Inspector (AGI) to change the texture and see the appearance on a frame without having to rebuild the game. Guetzli and Packjpg are some other tools available for .jpg compression, whereas Zopflipng and more such tools for png conversion. Reduce the size of your assets,  use compression on images, reduce the bitrate of any audio, and convert sound files to .ogg format to reduce the final app size. 

Apart from this, designers should implement vector graphics in order to develop simple resolution-independent images. 9 Slice Scaling is a good technique which Android game developers can use for 2D image resizing and proportionally scaling an image by splitting it in a grid of nine parts. This technique significantly helps in preventing image scaling distortion by protecting the pixels defined in 4 parts of the image and scaling or repeating them in the other 5 parts. Also, ensure that 3D objects have only as many vertices as are necessary to meet the visibility requirements on various screen sizes. Getting rid of unnecessary vertices significantly helps in reducing the app size. Also, change the formats of graphics’ texture. Go for texture formats that use fewer bits per channel, like RGB565, which is a 16-bit texture format, instead of a 32-bit texture format such as ARGB, wherever possible.

Remove Useless Assets, Models and Scripts

Remove any resources you don’t need. There may be scenes, sound files and pictures that are not used, so it’s a good way to reduce the app size by removing them. Also, any code which is not required for any functionality of your game will only increase the load on your app. By removing the junk, you can make your app more energized and active. Always remember that the size of the APK file is directly proportional to the load on your app, memory it occupies and power it consumes. Removing useless stuff helps reduce the size of your app and improve overall performance.

Also read 5 Best Programming Languages for Android Game Development

Reuse Resources

Another way to optimize your Android game app is to reuse your resources. If you have a rotated equivalent of another resource, then you should remove it as it will unnecessarily occupy space otherwise. For example, you may have resources to characterize varieties in an image related to tints, shades and direction. You can use the same resources to characterize varieties in other images too. So, reusing resources reduces the final size of your Android game app and is simpler than removal later on.

Avoid Enumerations

Enumerations are known to quickly grow for complex systems and shared libraries. A single enum can add about 1.0 to 1.4 KB size to the classes.dex file of your Android game app. So, you should avoid them. Consider using ProGuard to convert the enums into integers in order to reduce the app size. You can also use @IntDef annotation and code shrinking for the purpose of converting enums into integers, and the end result will be a reduced app size.

Don’t Make Extensive Use of External libraries

It’s common among developers to use external libraries to improve the user experience. For example,  Android Support Library for older devices and Google Play Services for auto-translation of app content. A library for a server or desktop can consist of a lot of objects and methods that are not not useful for your game app. So, you should edit the library's files to include only the parts that your app needs. You can also go for a mobile friendly library to add specific functionality to your app without making your app heavy.   

Don’t support all Screen Densities

Developers generally want to run the game app on all the Android devices, which is why they go for all screen densities. Android supports all screen densities, including ldpi, mdpi, tvdpi, hdpi, xhdpi, etc, but you don’t need them all. Find a way to know the percentage of users having devices with specific densities. This will help you understand whether or not you need to bundle those densities into your app. If you remove resources for a specific screen density, Android will itself do automated scaling of the available resources which were originally designed for other screen densities. If scaled images are all your app needs, you can include a single variant of an image in drawable-nodpi, which will further reduce the size of your app. 

Shrink native Binaries and Remove Debug Symbols

If you are using native code and the Android NDK for your app, you should optimize the code to reduce the build size. You can remove debug symbols and avoid extracting native libraries to optimize the code and reduce the size of the release. 

Use APK Size Analyzer

You can use the Android Size Analyzer to know all about the size of the APK. You will see the Raw File Size on the top of the screen, which will show you the APK on-disk size. The Download size will show you the estimated data your app will consume to download after taking in account the compression applied by Play Store. The analysis report will show you the things occupying most space in your app. Also, the Comparison feature allows you to see the difference in the sizes of old and new builds.   

Provide Multiple APKs Support

Some APKs have content which is not useful for every user. But, users have no way to download only a useful part of an APK, which results in increased app size. One cool way to deal with this is to upload the game app over Google Play store via Android App Bundle and get the ability to optimize APKs as per-device configuration. By doing this, you can actually divide one app into Multiple APKs and let users download only those APKs which are beneficial for them as per their device configuration.

Remove the Parts of Game Engine You aren’t Using

Including all the parts of your game engine despite not using them all will unnecessarily increase the game app size. For example,  Physics, x86 Architecture and .NET 4.x in Unity. The two .NET API compatibility levels Unity supports are NET 4.x and .NET Standard 2.0. Using .NET Standard 2.0 , you can restrict your app to a smaller subset of the .NET API, which helps in keeping the app’s size down. You should change the build to ARM as you don’t need x86 and also check out the stripping level.

Above I discussed some optimization techniques to reduce the size of an Android game app in order to increase installation rates and enhance user experience. Are you looking for a game app developer to convert your Android game idea into a reality and also provide game optimizing services to make your game app feel home on various Android devices? Logic Simplified can help!

Why Choose Us for Android Game Development and Optimizing Services?

Logic Simplified offers Android game development services to clients of different cultures world over. Hire game designers and developers who uses cutting-edge tools like Unity, Godot, GameMaker Studio 2, Unreal Engine, Maya, Blender, 3ds Max and many more to build Android games that live up the expectations of today’s modern gamers. We don’t just build games, but optimize them as well to ensure reduced file size and improved overall user experience. From conceptualization to designing, development, testing, different optimizations and deployment, we take care of all and allow you to significantly cut development time and cost at the same time. From our experience sprawling over 9 years in the gaming industry, we are in a very good position to tell you what exactly will work for your Android game and what won’t, which can turn out to be a big differentiator between the success and failure of your game. We are backed by team members who are passionate about gaming and committed to help game visionaries create games that rock the charts. If you’re also the one looking forward to building a new Android game mania, you can get in touch with our game development company to hire Android game developers and begin an exciting ride.

Let’s begin with design first

When designing an Android game app, the process involves story, storyboarding, graphics, creative writing, character design, 2D/3D modeling, set design and animation. On the other hand, a normal Android app (like an ecommerce app) involves interface design, graphics design, navigation ergonomics, app layout, app structure, contrasts, fonts, colours, imagery, animation, videos, logos, and information structure. The success of an Android game depends a lot on its design as gaming is a whole new world and players become a part of it as soon as they enter it. A video game is designed from scratch to the level of its full representation and it’s a more intense process than designing a non-gaming app. This makes it important to hire game designers and developers who are passionate about gaming and have the experience of creating awe-inspiring imaginary worlds gamers just don’t want to come out of.

Android game designers also use some tools that Android app designers often don’t need. Maya, Blender, 3ds Max, ZBrush, to name a few. These tools allow designers to create wonderful game art and export them to game engines, such as Unity and Unreal, without any rendering issues later on. That’s basically how an Android game design and an Android app design follow different approaches.

Android App Vs Game Development

Android app developers use Android Studio, Eclipse, Android SDK and APIs to build Android apps. If you want to build additional features for the app, then you can use special libraries, like JavaCV library for computer vision features. Android game app developers, on the other hand, mostly use game engines like Unity, Unreal and Godot. Android Studio can also be used for building Android game apps as it’s a dedicated software program to make Android games, but game engines make it easier and faster to build games as they have many in-built features that developers don’t need to code. Also, an Android app may just need a button, which is often not enough in Android game apps as developers also put animations on the buttons to enhance the look and feel for visually-oriented people. This becomes easier with game engines as they are designed to add such elements in games. Another big advantage of using game engines like Unity is that you can build game apps for multiple platforms without writing the code again and again.

As far as programming languages for android game development are concerned, it depends on the game engine you opt to use. For example, Javascript, C# or Boo is used in Unity, whereas C/C++ is used in Unreal Engine. Android studio is a general purpose coding engine and enables developers to use general libraries. Unity is specifically designed to output game code and compile events and structures, which makes it easier and faster to build a game app than in Android Studio. If you want to build an Android game without too much programming, games engines should be your bet. Unity also offers advertising and monetization solutions. Using Unity, you can integrate relevant ads and in-app purchases into your game to increase earnings. It saves you significant engineering hours while helping you to generate more revenue.

The Takeaway

If you want to build a simple game like Fastest Finger, then there is not much difference in normal Android app development and Android game development as both the code and functionality are almost the same. But if you want to build a high end game like a real car racing game or a Temple Run, then it’s a totally different ball game. Although the code is visually not that different, the way game designers and developers think and implement a game screen are very different from a normal Android app. The Java classes have to do a lot more than just activities, adapters and model classes.

When designing a normal Android app,  the major focus is on how each activity should look and its layout, UI elements in the form of buttons, text fields, etc. and touch controls like touch, swipe, double touch, etc. Android game designers have to focus on individual scenes. Each scene has a background and various objects like player objects, enemy objects and different obstacles that have to be presented in 2D or 3D. Some Android games involve physics and complex algorithms as well. So, depending on the end goal, building an Android game can be more intensive than building an Android app.

Build Your Android Game with Logic Simplified

There are more than 2 billion Android users world over and the OS has 74.6% market share in the global mobile operating system market, which makes Android devices enticing targets for building both game and non-game apps. If you have a wonderful game idea and want to turn into an Android game to earn high ROI, you can choose Android game development services to build a headturner Android game. We have a team of expert game designers and developers who are passionate about gaming and have hands-on experience of building Android games of international standards. Logic Simplified has been in the game development space for over 10 years now and has built many successful games using cutting edge tools such as Unity, Unreal, Godot, Blender, Maya, 3ds Max and many more. Getting your Android game done from experts like us will help you save a lot of time, money and avoid hassles of managing operations. You just focus on your core business activities and leave the rest to us. You can count on us to build a quality Android game with reduced time to market and highly engaging game elements that today’s gamers expect from mobile games. Share your game idea with us at enquiry@logicsimplified.com, and we will get back to you shortly to provide you with gaming solutions we are proud of.

Today, there are around 3.6 billion expected active Android smartphone users spread across 190 countries worldwide. Globally, Android takes 70.94% of the mobile operating system market share. (Source: Bankmycell) Android game development services are a booming business. As we write this, millions are sitting glued to their Android smartphones playing their favorite mobile games - PUBG, Coinmaster, Candy Crush Saga, Gardenscapes, and Garena Free Fire: Rampage, to name a few. 

With the competition so high and so many Android developers in the market, choosing the right development company for your game idea is important. GoodFirms’ list of Top Android Game Development Companies can help you make that decision, where Logic Simplified occupies prime position. Our full-scale design and development services are backed by the latest trends and are optimized for high performance on all devices, different screen sizes, and OS

While there are many programming languages available for Android game development, it is essential to choose the right one for your project. Let’s try to make that decision simple for you.   

5 Popular Programming Languages For Android Game Development 

Javascript 

Our company uses Javascript which is a user-friendly language and offers plenty of frameworks to work on.  Our game app developers use JavaScript engines that offer advanced-level facilities, comprehensive options of tools, and add-ons that improve the quality of the game development process compared to other engines. It has various frameworks and libraries - Phaser, Pixi.js, Babylon.js, Cocos2d, PlayCanvas, Kiwi.js, Panda Engine, MelonJS, QICI Engine, and CraftyJS that are open-source and free, with fast rendering for 2D and 3D elements, contributing to top-quality games. 

C#  

C# is a modern object-oriented programming language and is widely used for mobile games that are primarily programmed using the Unity game engine. C# is a high-level language and our game app developers are at ease with this programming language as it abstracts away many of the most complex tasks. Since the language itself is statistically typed, the code is checked before it is turned into a game application. So, it becomes easier to find errors which in turn saves time. Over the years, we have used C# to develop Android games and applications.

C++ 

C++ is another popular programming language used for building Android games. Our C++ developers use this lower-level language to build Android apps and games that run close to the hardware by getting the best performance out of it with limited use of resources. In addition, real-time operating system (RTOS) operations using C++ help control and time tasks, inter-task communication and synchronization, and memory management. Some popular C++ game engines are Unreal Engine, CryEngine, Lumberyard, Torque3D, and Source Engine. C++ is preferred for making heavy games for smartphones due to better customizability and 1 codebase maintenance. The compilation, as well as the execution time of C++ programs, is much faster when compared to most other languages and can be easily mixed with C/Assembly code to improve efficiency. 

TypeScript

This programming language follows “classic” Object-Oriented design, which plays nicely with many patterns and approaches prevailing in the game development industry. Logic Simplified has been building high-performing, cost-effective C++ Android games that run efficiently on all OS, from desktop apps to gaming consoles. Our team's best development practices and coding standards ensure that the software we create is reliable, scalable, and maintainable. When required, we use a superset of JavaScript that compiles to clean JavaScript output which is TypeScript. 

Java

Android app development, including games, has traditionally used Java as its language, and it remains the most commonly used language for this purpose. Our team of Android developers uses Java for its powerful capabilities to build Android game applications that work as intended. A significant number of gaming apps in the Play Store are built with Java, and it is also the language most widely supported by Google. Java’s strong online community, along with a comprehensive suite of tools and libraries and extensive documentation, makes it a great choice for beginners. Plus, Android Studio, the official IDE for Android development, offers full support for Java.  

The game designers and developers at Logic Simplified understand the ropes of Android game development through different programming languages. Our development team has built many Android games using various programming languages and game engines like Unity and Unreal. If you have an Android game idea, contact our specialists and turn your idea into a real game! All you need is to contact our game design and development studio or write to enquiry@logicsimplified.com and we will get in touch with you soon.